


Morning Mr Devil, Come Say Farewell to Your Dreams

by thisbloodycat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adultery, Angst, Angst and Romance, BFFs, Babies, Bonding, Down and Out Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy in the Muggle World, Drama, Dysfunctional Relationships, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Homophobic Language, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Infidelity, M/M, Magical Pregnancy, Mpreg, Obliviation, Omega Verse, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prostitution, Slow Burn, Switching, Trolling, Violence, non-con not between main characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-01-24 12:38:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18571678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbloodycat/pseuds/thisbloodycat
Summary: Nothing stays the same after a war. Except for lack of luck, that much Draco has noticed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to my betas [ID123](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ID123/), [Iwao](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iwao/pseuds/Iwao) and [CrazyParaKiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyparakiss/pseuds/crazyparakiss). You’ve been my sun, my moon and my stars. I couldn’t claim to have finished this without you kindly bearing with my rants, couldn’t possibly be more grateful than I am. 
> 
> Thank you mods for running this fest again—it’s one of my favourites! Written for [prompt 17](https://harrydracompreg.livejournal.com/317310.html?thread=3179902#t3179902) by [rubysilkensun](https://rubysilkensun.livejournal.com/).
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.

Draco used to read the _Prophet_ every morning.

He didn’t know why. It just made sense: a cuppa, a fry-up, and the _Daily Prophet_. What better way to start the day? At least that’s what he thought up until Father’s name first showed in the cover, most often paired with the words ‘Death Eater’. (He’s not even going to mention his days in Azkaban, it’s just much easier to pretend they never happened.)

He read it because it was the normal thing to do. And deep down, Draco really wanted normalcy. To have people around him that admired him, not for his blood status, but for what he had done. Granted, much of what he had done was quite misguided, but was it so wrong of Draco to want friends that stood by him with pride, despite that?

Apparently it was, if the way things turned out for him were anything to go by. Instead of friends, Draco ended up with two sidekicks that were more like chavish minions than they were confidants—one of them actually got the nerve to betray him, the… supreme _wanker_ , that’s what he was. And if he was honest, said sycophants were just following the Golden Rule all Death Eater born sprog must abide to: obey their parents’ orders to death, or something of the like. Draco deviated from that part of the script for as long as he could. At least up until sixth year. He must have done a crap job of it because, by the time he wanted to back out, he couldn’t. By then, the Dark Lord and his cronies were already chumming it up back at his parents’ manor, and the consequences for disobedience were too close to ignore, not to mention way too horrifying to risk.

The only good thing that came from Draco’s time at Hogwarts was, possibly, Pansy. He couldn’t say she admired him because, frankly, she never did seem to give a damn one way or the other. But at least she was his friend. Even after uselessly crushing on him for all those years. He’s quite sure he broke her heart when he came out, that night when he got drunk and… well, that’s a tale for another time. Especially since it’s such a blur in his mind. He’s not even sure what he told her—though it was likely a crass spiel on his preference for prick over pussy. That would certainly explain her _behaviour_ the morning afterwards.

The point here is, these days he doesn’t even _have_ breakfast. No, it’s turned into more of a late brunch, as most of his days start past midday. Apparently, he’s an ‘escort’ now. A job he absolutely hates, but at the very least he’s not alone. Alongside him is his BFF Pansy, whom he sometimes loves… but most days he truly, madly, deeply loathes and despises.

Yes, nothing new there. It just so happened they both got the short ends of the stick and landed in the same box… the less than reputable one in the far back labeled ‘hooker’. A box that most people try to avoid so much as setting foot in, if they can help it. And, frankly, the ones who do… well, let’s just say they wouldn’t make for good neighbours. Not that either Draco or Pansy had many options for employment in the first place, since everyone knew they were former Death Eaters—especially Draco, as he bore the Mark.

But isn’t that swell? At least he’s not alone in this whole new enterprise of theirs!

Sometimes, he takes a pause and compares what his life was like before the war—before everything went to hell and back, and everything he believed lost any kind of meaning it ever had to him—and what it is now. The more he thinks about it, the clearer and clearer it becomes that there’s only one single thing his current life shares with the one before. And that one constant, funnily enough, is his habit of reading the paper first thing when he wakes up.

He reckons that the bright side (or perhaps the not-so-bright side) is that he still can’t seem to get his head around why he even bothers. He has a theory, albeit a flimsy one: he likes to read the _Prophet_ because it somehow makes him feel like a normal member of society again. And these days he’d give both his kidneys and a piece of his heart, to have his life return to anything remotely close to the so called ‘normalcy’ he had before.

Especially on days like today.

The _Prophet_ used to have such an ample variety of topics, whereas nowadays, since the Dark Lord’s offed, it’s been drastically reduced to one subject matter: _Harry_ bloody _Potter_. He knows  he might be exaggerating here, but it seems as if every single day since the Endgame Battle all news stories posted seem to come back to Potter. He knows it’s ridiculous, but it bothers him. _The saviour of all mankind does_ this _. The hero of the Wizarding World does_ that _._ Is there a single reporter left with an imagination, or has all of journalism devolved into one giant Rita Skeeter exposé?

Even his own trial had been about Potter. _The Chosen One Testifies for a Death Eater. Chosen One’s Words Save Death Eater from Azkaban_. Yadda yadda yadda, blahdy blahdy blah. Draco frowns, reaching for his cup of tea. For some odd reason, there has never been a headline reading: _Malfoy’s Lands Taken by the Ministry_ , or _Settlements & Reparations: Draco Malfoy Stripped of his Inheritance_.

No, of course not. The _Heroes_ —all those who fought for light and good, bless them—do not care the slightest bit. As far as they were concerned, Draco was better off dead. Not even a miserable _Parents off to Jail! Son Left on His Own to Deal with His Nonexistent Future_ made the headlines after the trials.

It’s just his luck.

Another drawn out sigh, a tiny sip of tea.

His luck—or lack thereof, more likely—is stunning, as usual. These days Draco’s taken to thinking it ran out when he was eleven, when he bumped into Potter on the Hogwarts Express. It’s just easier to believe that rather than what actually happened. Besides, the more he thought of Potter and the dreadful choice that brought him here, the more his head started to hurt, sleep evading him farther. He’d much rather stick to easy thoughts, (a.k.a. blaming Potter for all his woes), mostly because it’s painless. And anyway, at least _those_ thoughts won’t keep him awake at night.

Merlin knows it’s not the Firewhisky keeping his insomnia alive and kicking. No, the Firewhisky might actually be the only thing helping these days, lulling him softly to sleep when all else fails. It was all he could do to smuggle the case he had from Father’s cellar, before Aurors came to kick him out of his ancestral home. And he’s sure the absurd amounts of Polyjuice he’s been drinking isn’t to blame either. Merlin knows the mere thought of the vile concoction is enough to make him sick up; but, if the years under Snape’s tutelage taught Draco anything, it was that Polyjuice has no effect on one’s sleep patterns.

Though it’s a wonder that his spine is intact… 

He’s not too sure the old Draco Malfoy could bear it if he knew what fate awaited him after the war. If he’d be able to stomach it. He still cringes at the idea of  people seeing how far he’s fallen. If his customers could see his true face and know exactly who he is as he spreads his legs for them—invitation obvious provided they’ve paid—Draco doesn’t think he’d be able to live with the shame.

Fortunately, they can’t. Polyjuice and all.

But then again, the old Draco Malfoy stopped existing about six months back, after his release. Now he’s just a pretty face, utterly forgettable, because one too many hits did him in for good.

Pansy, lovable twat that she is, chose that moment to enter the room, whilst Draco was in the midst of brooding over is woeful existence. She’s hit the showers already, her dark hair dried with hot air charms falls well-combed around her face. She makes a beeline for the coffee cup Draco left waiting for her on the desk. It’s takes effort not to roll his eyes at Pansy—she isn’t the only creature of habit in their shabby little apartment. Coffee is to Pansy, as the morning news is to Draco: an essential part of their routine. It should still be warm; Draco actually remembered to place a warming charm on it this time around. Her hand slides over his back on her way there. “Slept well?”

“Quite,” Draco lies smoothly. He’s never sure if Pansy buys it or not, what with her poker face, but takes it as a good sign when she moves on to change the subject.

“Zabini called last night. You have a date at eight.”

Pansy handles the logistics of their enterprise, managing their bookings and calls while Draco… well, Draco mostly brews tea, occasionally makes Pans coffee in the morning, and plays _Lineage_ on his laptop when she’s gone. He’s made himself a dark elf mage; it’s hilarious because it looks quite as angry as he feels, mostly at himself. (It’s also quite hilarious what Muggles think a mage can do, but that, yet again, is a tale for another time.) Twat or not, Pansy is by far the more organized of the two. Not that it matters one way or another. Even if he wanted to, Draco couldn’t take Floo calls without the risk of being recognized.

“Oh, joy,” he says wearily, turning another page. Seriously, _more_ news on Potter? Apparently, he’s planning to adopt a Crup. These _Prophet_ reporters never rest, do they? “At least he doesn’t require the icky potion.”

He catches Pans reading over his shoulder for a moment. “What?” he asks.

At Pansy’s lack of reply, he glances up, only to find Pans smirking down at him like one of the pros online. (Draco has seen them on that YouTube thing Muggles watch. He quite likes it. They tend to call themselves trolls, Salazar knows why, especially since they’re all too tiny to look in anyway trollish.)

“No.” Draco’s eyes narrow. He knows where this is going and, “Pans, _no_. Seriously, do not.”

“Exclusive news,” she yells for all the whole neighbourhood to hear and beyond, “Draco Malfoy stares longingly at Potter’s face all through his brunch!” 

Draco, who was about to have a second sip, pauses abruptly, barely avoiding spitting all over his hand. 

“To think after all these years, you still can’t keep your eyes off him…” She chanced a grin, at Draco’s expense.

“Excuse me?”

Pansy doesn’t respond right way, fixing Draco with one of her knowing looks. “You know…” She pauses, humming to herself. “I think you should,” she adds, while reaching out to grab the _Prophet_ out of his hands. 

Draco’s having none of it, clamping his hands around the newspaper in defiance and refusing to let go. What the hell is she on about now, the bint’s not playing with a full deck. “I should _what_?”

“Do him, obviously.” 

“Why would I even—?”

Pansy takes the seat beside him, making a show of examining her nails before remarking, “Why not? Merlin knows he’s loaded. More than Zabini, even. And there are feelings there, more than a bit I’d say…”

“Mercy takes no skill, mercy takes no will,” Draco mutters the mantra to himself, willing himself to stay calm, busying himself with his tea. “Have mercy on her and leave her be…” Does he really have to listen to her hogwash gibberish everyday? Because his mind keeps saying, _do not kill her in her sleep_ , but he thinks he should, and _somewhere in her twisted mind she actually thinks she’s being helpful_ , which might be true, but really… Potter? _Plus, she’s letting you live here, and isn’t that a bonus?_

Hmm… Well, that last one might be true.

But somehow, as days go by, he’s less and less convinced by his own mind. Perhaps he should get a new one, clearly the one he owns is broken.

“Ah. Going Zen on me, I see,” Pansy teases. “You are getting quite good at that. If I recall correctly, it’s been seventeen hours since you turned my burlesque hat into a yellow pickle.”

“It was certainly not a pickle.” _It was a dildo, you daft cow_. He could always _Incendio_ her bra, perhaps she’d like that better.

“Whatever. Just think about it, you honestly think Zabini is going to last much longer? He’s been shagging you, how long? Six months, and I’m being generous here—do you think he’ll stick forever and ever, take you as his wedded bride, or what?”

Draco catches himself mid-gape. “He _likes_ me, thank you very much!”

“Yes, I’m sure he does.” She waves her hand in the air in dismissal. The nerve of her! “Especially on all fours, legs open. But he’s a Slytherin, love, and a smart one at that.” One of her eyebrows lifts and she adds, sarcasm implicit in her tone, “Much smarter than _you_ , I might add.”

Tension seizes him for a split second, his shoulders going ramrod straight before going limp in his chair in defeat. The best defence he can manage is muttering a rather terse, “I didn’t exactly get to pick my side of the fence.”

“No, of course not. You were just a sentimental little prat.” Pansy rolls her eyes. “Oh dear, my family is in danger!” she mimics mockingly, hand pressed to her chest in a dramatic fashion. “You couldn’t save them in the end, could you?”

“Trollop.”

“Perhaps, but you know I’m right. Zabini managed to sit right on the middle of the fence all through the war, didn’t he? And look at him now. Chumming with all the new-wave politicians, shaking hands with the Mudblood mid-Ministry… free of all the reparations they had _us_ pay.”

Draco bristles. “It’s not like I’m that poor…”

“ _Yet_ ,” Pansy warns. “You are not that poor _yet_. But he’ll get bored of you, and like it or not, he’s your best client.”

Draco’s nose crumples in distaste. “Could we talk about this after I’ve finished with breakfa— _brunch_ ,” he corrects himself, eager to change the subject.

Pansy however, has no intentions of relenting, pinning him with her trademark smirk. “Not a chance.”

“I could get a Muggle job if we need the cash. It’s not like they care who I am.”

“Please.” Pansy scoffs, breaking her gaze to roll her eyes at Draco.

“What?”

“You wouldn’t last for very long out there, Draco. Last time you tried to do that, you couldn’t even get one of their passwords.”

“Pass _ports_ ,” he corrects. “It’s the tiny book with manky pictures that don’t move.” Not like the videos on YouTube. He wonders how they do that. Muggles seem true masters at living without magic.

“Whatever.”

“You need to have one if you want to apply for a job. It just turns out the nice lady doing mine wasn’t, how to say, extremely kind once she’d read my surname.” Yes, his visit to the Muggle’s Paperwork Department in the Ministry of Magic had not been particularly pleasant. With nerves licking his lips, Draco picks his teacup up, again. “A Squib, apparently,” he says, quite sarcastically. Also, quite aware he’s lying about his own feelings regarding Squibs. He’s been prompted to hate them—thanks ever so much, Father. He’s not sure he ever could, at least not since his own brain grew thoughts and tendons, and began walking on his own. He certainly can’t now, considering many of them live better lives than the one left for him: a loser, an underdog. Defeated. Best not to leave him air to breathe. “No wonder her lack of charm.”

“My point is you didn’t get one,” Pansy says, “and you can’t live like this forever. You’re taking too much Polyjuice, it’s dangerous! You could…”

“I’m fine, Pans.” Draco looks down into his tea mug. There’s an uneasy swirl in his stomach, pretty much what he keeps feeling these days whenever he thinks about swallowing that bland green foulness. “There’s still one of you and not twenty. See? I’m perfectly fine.”

“You are not listening,” she explains—rather incomprehensibly, Draco thinks, since he’s been listening. “He’s a Gryffindor.” She points at Potter’s photo on the _Daily Prophet_. “Morals, principles and all that bollocks. I doubt he’d ever let you starve. If only he knew what you’re doing with your life—”

Draco rolls his eyes. “It’s not that easy.”

“Really,” Pansy deadpans, all the while holding his gaze. “He spoke in your favour during your trial.”

“So?”

“So, he obviously cares about you, you twat. Granted, in some bizarre manly way that involves massive frowning-slash-staring contests between you two. Still, it doesn’t take a genius to see he’s interested. Honestly, did you sleep through your trial or what?”

“I had more important things in mind,” Draco replies curtly. He wasn’t sure if he would live through the ordeal, let alone be set free. The lands and accounts left to him were as good as seized once his father was removed from the picture. Granted, there was enough to pay the settlement, but barely so. “Just to shut your trap, _I_ don’t care about him, and that’s that.”

Draco’s jaw tightens. He looks down at the photograph again. Potter, suffering from wet hair—duh, likely he forgot there’s a spell to prevent that—on top of his generally irritable nature. He looks grudgingly grateful at Granger for an instant there, all while he manages to sneak behind her into the magical creatures shelter. Granger stays where she is, her wand pointed at whoever took the picture. Then the photograph restarts. Something aches in Draco’s chest, he’s not sure what. Perhaps he’s coming down with something? He rather hopes it’s that, and not a heart strike.

“It’s not like you _have_ to,” Pansy says, her voice as blatantly dispassionate as it’s been through all their talk.

“Besides, he’s married.” Draco closes and folds the paper, puts it on the table and points down at the cover headline: _Newlyweds Return from Honeymoon in Paris_. “To Weaselbee’s lil’ sister. It happened weeks ago, I’m quite shocked you didn’t notice. It was all over the _Prophet_.” Plus, it’s all they talk about.

“Oh, I did notice. But that’s his problem, not yours.” She leans back comfortably on her chair. He pictures her carefully examining her nails again. Alas, it doesn’t happen, she just says, “Most of your clients are married anyway.”

“You really think he’s into me?”

“No.” She shrugs. “What I’m trying to say here is, you’ll never know if you don’t try.”

It’s nothing but a suggestion. But somehow a suggestion that’s now stuck in his mind, and no matter how hard he shakes his head it’s… well, it’s not leaving.

Damn you, Pans.

*** * ***

He tries as an escort, the first time.

He does have a plan. He figures that is what happens when he can’t put his brain on pause, not even at night, when pain is Death Eaters and the dark is way too dark to be good. It’s a great plan too, at least he thinks so. He _knows_ Potter. Frankly, something good had to come out of all those years at school, sneaking glances at him across the hallway. Out of rivalry, of course—it’s not like he’d been drawn in by Potter’s charm, since Potter’s charm was never quite, never there. But anyway, the point here is he knows Potter, and he knows how he works. He’s remarkably easy to manipulate: present yourself as a victim, and he’ll set all else aside to help you, because he desperately loves being a hero. _Anyone’s_ hero.

The big issue here is, Draco is not too keen on following his own plan.

He’s not too keen on being prey again. It’s too humiliating. He reckons he’s had enough of that up to now. He has the last tiny bits of what he calls his ego, whatever is left of it. Draco’s clutching dearly to them, thank you very much, even if most days it feels a bit like clutching at straws slipping through his fingers. He’s really not looking forward to making himself a victim again, not if it can be avoided, especially considering that to most of the Wizarding World he _already is_. Both to those who won the war and to those who didn’t, as neither of them seem too happy with the path Draco walked.

And Potter really doesn’t need to know that.

Potter doesn’t need to see him down on the dust, just as he doesn’t need to know how messed up Draco’s life is right now. So, no. The plan can jump out the window for all he cares, for he’s not going to stick to it. He’ll go as an escort, a random escort picked out of the gigantic pile of potions they keep in the entry cupboard—remodeled by he himself; not that he’s taking credit for it, but he did manage to make the inside rather huge. He figures he’ll pick one out of the largest assortment in there and hope for the best, because the longer he can keep Potter using Polyjuice, the better. That is, if Polyjuice even works.

He gets up quite early the following morning, even though he forgot to set his wand to ring at six.

After a long, long shower, he clears enough condensation off the mirror to be able to see his face—at least a tiny bit of it, he’s not quite sure he wants to see it in full detail. He’s aware he’s getting thinner. He’s perfectly aware the amount of Firewhisky he’s consuming these days only exacerbates the dark shadows under his eyes. He’s aware that it really needs to drop, but he’s also aware that that’s certainly not going to happen anytime soon. That it’s not likely to drop ever, and Merlin knows that if it does, he’ll start contemplating nooses as a chance-slash-possible way out, because, no. Plus, he’s sworn to Pansy no more Sleeping Draughts, not after last time…

Draco contemplates the greenish potion on his sink. It’s been standing there since yesterday. Why indeed wait longer? He grabs the bottle, all while his mirror self cringes and shows him an extremely emphatic thumb down.

Draco, of course, pokes his tongue out at it. “That’s all I get from you—” he shakes his head “—uninterrupted complaints, nothing but…”

Once it’s uncorked, he raises his hand. “Cheers,” he tells his mirror self, and as a toast, he smiles a fake-smile to it. Then, he swallows the concoction with an ick.

It tastes like burnt toads, with a hint of dust-wrapped worms. As usual.

Afterwards, he waits for his body to change shape. It hurts, but he’s sadly used to it. He can deal with it, and that’s that. Plus, if this doesn’t work, if Potter is somehow immune to escorts, principles with a capital P and all, he’d rather not have him knowing what Draco’s been doing these past few months. Spreading his legs for others to poke their tiny pricks in there. A cold shiver coils in his stomach—no, thanks, he’s had enough shame thrown at him so far.

In the end, it turns out it’s all rather pointless. It’s not like he manages to find Potter that day, despite his constant rushing into the nearest loo whenever Polyjuice threatens to vanish from his bloodstream. He doesn’t find him during the next one either, or even the day following that one. It basically feels like a great waste of (illegally obtained; ta Pans dearest) potion on a chore already failed. Especially since, in three full days, he still has no clue where Potter is. Not even after visiting every single place where the _Prophet_ caught him. He’s about to go back to his dates, leave this Pans-prompted dream-like existence as unfinished business, go back to normal life—or at least to what normal is in his life and whatnot. His stomach will certainly thank him, he knows that much: he can’t remember swallowing this much poison in such a short period of time _ever_. But then the next day, Pansy comes home mid-afternoon.

“I saw him!” she exclaims.

Draco, who’s reading _net_ , a Muggle magazine on how to work those pee-cee things they have, keeps reading. He’s quite stoked. He thinks he’s finally found out how those trolls he’s seen on YouTube record their videos. Apparently, and according to what this magazine says, he needs to check if his laptop has a ‘webcam’. He figures this ‘webcam’ thing must be some sort of camera—in truth, he’s a bit stumped: his laptop seems too small to have anything even remotely resembling a camera anywhere on it. Perhaps he should search ‘webcam’ on Google Images, just to know how one of them looks. Perhaps it looks nothing like a magical camera, who knows?

Belatedly, he answers, “Sorry, you saw whom?”

“Potter, duh.” Honestly, he doesn’t even need to see her. The sheer tone of her voice is more than enough for Draco to picture her eyes rolling. “Obviously.”

“Did you now…” He looks up. Keeps his face in a significantly unimpressed pose, though he really is quite impressed. “Where?”

“I had a short break between two dates, so I went into the Albany. I was about to order a cocktail, but when I looked up though, there he was! Potter, having lunch…”

Draco searches for it on Google Maps. He’s become quite a tech-savvy, considering, and no, it’s not the magazine he’s reading. He just (some days) has tons of free time (can’t sleep at all), and this World Wide Web thing Muggles have is really rather interesting. On his screen, it shows a pub in a Muggle part of London. No wonder Draco hasn’t found him yet. He’s been looking in all the wrong places. Turns out Potter wasn’t anywhere around Diagon Alley, after all.

“… as if it were the most common thing for a wizard, as reverently famous as he is, to have lunch at a Muggle place—”

“Muggles are _people_ ,” Draco interrupts, “like you and me. And they’re quite nice, too.” Even nicer than most wizards, in spite of their trolls on YouTube and their Mr. Trololo. Draco still doesn’t get that last one, but Muggles seem to think he’s hilarious. “I mean that, Pans. Insult them not.”

“So you keep saying.” Her nose curls up in disgust. “Anyway, the waiters over there knew him,” she goes on. “They called him by his name and all. I really didn’t want Potter to see me, so I left. Plenty of cafés around that street, no need to stay in the one he’s in.”

Then, she steals one of his carrot sticks, munching unashamedly in front of him. The massive prat. Draco watches her, eyes narrowed. Is she up to something? Because it seems she is, but he’s not sure what exactly.

“And he was alone?” He really, really hopes she’s not, or else. “Weasel and the Mud— _Granger_ weren’t there with him?”

“Nope.” Pansy smiles sweetly. “Completely alone, I swear on my mum’s life.”

Frankly, he’s not sure why, but he’s not too convinced. That smile looked a bit too sugary, didn’t it? Besides, “Your mum is daft, you often say. It’s not as if you care much what she thinks.”

“Fine. On my honour, then. Happy?”

Draco eyes her doubtfully. “I don’t know…” It might be Pansy’s grin while talking about Potter, it always makes the hair on his arms stand on end. She is most definitely up to something. What though? He wonders. “Did you ever have any of that honour thing? I honestly can’t recall… I thought those who had it went to other Houses, not ours.”

“I swear, some days,” Pans says seriously, “you are a real blast of fun.”

Whatever, Draco thinks, mostly because at least he’s not the one trying to pull one on someone here. Love-hate, he thinks. Lean towards love, Zen is the way to go, he thinks. Do not kill her, she’s still your friend. Be Nice to Your Friends is his new motto. It’s a shame he doesn’t have one of those ‘webcams’, he’d likely be quite proud of his troll video right now. Still, he goes to the Albany the next day, mostly because it’s either that or spreading his legs for Patterson, whose breath smells like a farting Kneazle.

He waits inside the pub, getting increasingly tetchy as time passes and passes and Potter’s _still not there_. He looks down at his watch. Far past one. Looks again—past one-thirty. He tries quite hard not to look back at it, pouting as the place empties. It’s getting late and Potter’s not there, Potter’s not showing up, and why indeed is Potter not showing up? He’s literally pacing up and down by the time Potter arrives… flanked by Granger and Weaselbee, of course.

Pans, you lying twat.

The worst part is that he sort of knew it, and this is what he gets for not trusting his flipping hunches.

He’s actually bothered to look good this morning, wore his best clothes and everything. Yes, okay, he’s perfectly aware that it’s not exactly one of those truly expensive suits Muggles watch famous people wearing, on those tee-vee shows they have. He knows that, okay? He also knows Desmond Merrion isn’t amongst the list of designers, that it’s a suit likely made in some lost country off to the East, designed by who-knows-whom up North, and sold for a hundred quid in the nearest H&M. But at least it’s a suit. He looks good in it, and he knows he does, and anyway, it’s not like he could afford better.

And all his efforts are useless now, because there’s no way he can flirt with Potter in front of _them_.

So he sits there for ages, mostly watching, quite boredly. He looks through the menu—not that he’s going to order anything else, thanks—then fiddles a bit with the napkin on his table, mostly because _it’s there_ and he doesn’t know what else to do. Until, suddenly, Potter gets up and heads to the loo.

A stroke of luck, Draco thinks, that thing he lacks. He can hardly believe it. So he ponders and ponders, breathes in and breathes out, and concludes… well, nothing particularly relevant, except that he probably should follow Potter. It’s pretty much the dumbest conclusion he’s ever reached in his whole life, but it kind of, sort of makes sense? It’s not like it’s going to get any better than this, and at least he knows Potter is alone in there—which is really not _too hard_ , considering everyone else has left. And he’s gone over this: he’s been practising at home, he can do it. Sure, the toilet may not be the sexiest place when picking out a place to flirt, but it is at least a place, isn’t it?

He is just going to have to do with that. So he inhales, gets up, and follows Potter to the bathroom.

And then, somehow, it all goes wrong.

For some absurd reason, his mind goes blank when he sees Potter watching him on the mirror. He’s never been this close to him since sixth year, except perhaps those few moments on his broom during seventh…

 _No_ , his mind tells him, _do not go back there, you seriously don’t want to go back there_. The sad thing is, for once, Draco actually agrees with it. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to go back there, but he can’t help it: he’s _already there_. The last time Potter and him were together in a bathroom, he got cursed. _Sectumsempra_. That’s exactly where his mind goes. To blood rushing through his chest and thinking, _am I dying? Salazar, is this my last breath?_ Living days past beyond all measure. Only, they weren’t, aren’t, he didn’t…

His brain loses the plot.

He goes mad as a bag of ferrets. Which almost makes him laugh, considering he’d been one for a while, and it bloody _hurt_ , and Potter laughed at him, and…

Images flash before his eyes.

His whole world moves fast and faster, on a spin forward with no stop. He hears the Dark Lord’s voice in the distance, kill Dumbledore or else… or else Mother, but _not Mother please not her, take me instead_. The Dark Lord laughs. Somewhere within his brain, Draco recalls the sound of grinding bones in Snape’s class—crash, crank, crash-crank- _crack_. That’s what the Dark Lord’s laugh sounds like. Like squashing your marrow till you bend and bow and say yes yes yes because, “You are mine.” The mark on his skin burns, itches. He yearns to scratch it. _I will do as you wish_. Fenrir flashes by, Severus Snape—you can’t, you can’t, Merlin, but you want to. You want to be able to do it, to be able to cast the curse, to be able to keep Mother safe for she’s done nothing but…

She’s done nothing but what Draco’s done. What he’s doing. All for…

 _Avada Kedavra_.

Dumbledore falls into an unending abyss. Only, it’s not unending, it just seems unending because time has slowed. Stopped. But it has an end, and Draco can see it. He can see the ground down there.

A cry.

Are those… bones shattering? Merlin, he really doesn’t want to look, but he sees Fenrir’s eyes fixate on him and…

His heart stops. _He’s going to kill me_. Snape’s hand pulling on his.

Confusion.

Punishment. Pain. _Crucio_. “You failed,” the Dark Lord says. His voice echoes in Draco’s mind—haunted, empty, cold, frozen.

Freezing.

“You are useless.” Useless, useless… the word reverberates, as continual agony, all while he wonders, _Am I useless?_ “Perhaps I’ll let Fenrir have a little fun with you. Wouldn’t you like that, Fenrir?”

Draco swallows.

No. No no no. Not Fenrir, please.

Not any of them, please. He tries his hardest to crawl out of it, to come back to what’s real and what’s _now_. He tries to say, ‘Hey, gorgeous’. Tries to say, ‘Can I just say, I love your eyes’, tries to say any of all those silly sentences he’s been practicing at home, because he _does_ feel quite useless and he doesn’t want to be _that_. Doesn’t want to be useless, doesn’t want…

“I, uh…” None of them comes out.

The Dark Lord was right.

“I…” Merlin, if he gets it wrong once more, he’ll want to bang his head against the wall, painfully. Yet no one here will be particularly entertained by another display of lack of graciousness. Not him. Certainly not Potter. And besides, the wall is far too close. How did he end up there, anyway? Slouching against the loo’s wall, bathed in sweat…

“Are you okay?” Potter asks.

Is that Draco’s sweat? Is he sweating? _You are useless_.

“I’m a whore,” he hears himself say. Meanwhile, the blur that is his mind panics because that is _not_ what he’s supposed to say. This is _not_ how it’s supposed to go. He’s doing things all wrong and he _can’t fix it_ now, it’s _past_.

“Er…” Potter recoils. “Right, sure…”

Draco licks his lips. “Do you want to—?”

“Er, no. No.” Potter holds his hands in front of him as he walks backwards towards the door. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

_Useless. Even more useless than your father._

Potter leaves. Draco puts his hands on his face, scrubs them hard over his cheeks. Shit. _Shit_.

* * *

 

“I got a Floo call from Wright while you were gone,” Pansy tells him when he gets home. “He wanted to set a date. I didn’t know what to tell him.”

Wright. Yes. Potion labeled three, and through the fog that is his mind, he mumbles, “Tell him I’ll go.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Pansy. I’m sure.” Terribly sure, sadly. After the great mess-up today, he doesn’t think he could be any surer than he is.

Later that evening, Draco lays back against the door to his room. The flashbacks, it’s been weeks since he’s had them.

He takes a breath, cut off as shallow.

His brain is doing that thing again, where it’s both hazy and a mess and… and it won’t work right. He curls up next to the door, arms around his knees, his own head resting between his legs. He really, really wants a drink. Draco blinks steadily while his mind works to justify the need. _Just a drink. Just one wouldn’t hurt._ There’s still a bottle of Firewhisky on his side table. It’s still half-full. Half-full is better than half-empty, isn’t it? There are still four left under the bed, he tells himself, completely ignoring that at the rate he’s going they’re not likely to last longer than a couple of weeks. One drink to take the edge off. He’s not crying over that again. He’s done his crying. It’s past. It’s over. It’s done. Gone, and never coming back.

Draco’s stomach dips with every nervous breath.

He just wants something that will help him forget. Wants something to work. But nothing ever does.

He swears to himself, that night, he’ll never let Pansy delude him into thinking his life can be better than it is, because it can’t. His life is never going to be better. He doesn’t even deserve for it to be better. What was he _thinking_? He’s useless and he knows it, he knows it now better than anytime before. He swears that to himself over a hundred times: promises and promises and promises, until the liquor puts him to sleep.

*** * ***

 

He wakes up the next day, along with a massive hangover, and goes back to his life as it is nowadays. Yes, sure, Corbyn, labeled five. He’ll go to Walker’s place tonight. No issues, it’s all fine.

Except it’s not.

Pansy picks up his calls, as usual—because she’s good at sounding normal, she’s great at it. Because she doesn’t have the mark. She might be hated, but no one wants her dead. And isn’t that fab? Because she might have messed up a bit, but not all the way.

Not like Draco did.

“You need to work less,” she chides him one day. “Too much potion, it will kill you.”

He cringes. Even the thought of Polyjuice makes him dizzy these days. It’s like he’s forgetting who he is, who he was, _what_ he is. And all of that, to be nothing at all.

“I’ll work less when we’ve got cash.” He fills a glass with water and sits on the counter by the sink, because he’s tired, burnt-out and half-dead, and he really, really doesn’t want to talk about this. Not now.

“What about Potter?”

He frowns. Suddenly his mouth feels dry, despite the water he’s been drinking. His hand feels cold around the glass, colder even than the glass. He thinks about the flashbacks he has at night. About how he messed up that day. He lifts his free hand; it runs shivery over his own face. _I tried. I tried_ —his own fingers curl in anger on his hair— _and I failed_.

He refuses to answer her question.

Pans never asks again.

*** * ***

“At last!” Pansy says when he gets home, her concerns blatantly evident in her gaze. “What on Earth happened to you?”

“Hello to you too,” Draco says, under his breath. He’s a bit annoyed, mostly at himself: annoyed because Pans is not like his johns, annoyed that his first thought upon arriving was _Salazar_ , _what did I do wrong this time?_ It’s stupid. He already knows what he’s done. It’s not like there’s anything he could have done to prevent it. It has nothing to do with him. Besides, Pansy sees him: she knows he’s not worthless, and that’s something. She would never blame him for what happened, even if she _knew_ which, thankfully, she doesn’t. For all she knows, he is just a tad unlucky in his choices, and that’s that.

Still, some kind of greeting would have been appreciated.

“You were supposed to be back half an hour ago.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He’s still feeling a bit shaky, and would prefer not to start a quarrel over chiding himself on today’s blunder. “I stopped for a cuppa on my way back.” She’s better off not knowing he never did, not knowing he basically stood half-dazed mid-street for quite a while, because the flashbacks came back when he wasn’t even expecting them. He hasn’t had a very good week. Yet, he’s smart enough to know telling her that would turn concern into real worry, and that neither of them needs that right now. “I didn’t even realise what time it was.”

“A new bloke called in,” Pansy tells him. “I was beginning to think I’d have to call him back, ask him to delay the date or—”

“No need, I’ll go.” Draco nods, but then he remembers, “Did he give you his name? What am I supposed to call him?”

“He did say something, I just can’t recall what… hold on, it has to be around here, somewhere.” Searching through the stack of papers piled in front of her, she comes up with a card. She stares at it, squinting a little to read whatever’s written there. Draco is weirdly amused in his shivery state, he’s been telling her for quite a while she ought to buy a pair of specs, yet she keeps refusing. Last time he brought it up, she looked at him over her shoulder and sneered, “And throw all my glamour down the drain? No, thanks,” uptight like she is, a total berk.

Honestly, with her hairstyle, a shoulder-length bob of bluish black, she’d look great in some of them. The horn-rimmed ones he saw this morning would make her look rather sexy, a bit like those Muggle teachers that came up when he searched Google for porn—he’s learned quite a bit since then, now he types ‘gay porn’, because it’s all great and fab when fannies are for others but, Merlin, they’re seriously not for him. He’s about to mention that, but then he remembers where exactly he saw them, and that Potter’s ugly face stood behind them. With a frown, he decides he’s much better quiet—Pans already thinks, silly of her, that he has a crush on Potter; far better not to give her more ammo, she’s done enough bad as it is.

“Miller,” she says.

“Miller it is, then.” And he fakes a smile for her. “Which potion?”

“Number eight. He quite liked the photo I showed him through the Floo.” She holds out a tiny piece of scroll. Doesn’t say what it is, but Draco’s guess is it may be Miller’s address—he has to Floo somewhere after all. He takes it from her on his way to the entry cupboard, where he contemplates the tiny stack of eights piled in there. No more than six.

“I don’t think we’ve ever used this one before,” he ponders.

“We haven’t.” Pansy shrugs. “He looked quite well-off, to be honest, I thought we might charge him extra. I told him you were new here so…”

“So just try to act like you are?” Draco completes for her, since he’s feeling quite witty. Subtext: ‘Relax, lass. I can do that’.

“He’s paying for a full night, too. It’s quite a bit of quid,” Pans says, hope shining in her voice as she gives a tight little smile. Draco can see the implicit meaning behind it. _Please, try your best not to fuck this up_.

“Indeed. When do I have to be there?”

“Now, you need to be there _now_ ,” she emphasises. And, okay, that kind of explains it all, the lack of a ‘Hey, how are you?’ and definitely her ‘At last’. “You see, technically, you should have arrived there—” she leans back, checking the magical clock hanging on the kitchen wall, “—around ten minutes ago.”

Rather dire, since he’s already late.

He’s not too fond of belatedness when it comes to his job, it tends to create a bad relationship between him and his clients, one that he’s not too keen on putting up with. On top of that, he’s going to have to take a potion over the last one, which still hasn’t worn off. He’s not sure if that affects how they work. Honestly, his Potions lessons feel ages ago, did Snape ever say anything about that in class? He pauses for a minute, thinking. He might have, but was he talking about Polyjuice or some other potion? Not sure, not yet. Regardless, considering what he’s going to get paid, it might be worth a try. It’s definitely plenty of cash.

He finds himself, unawarely, smiling even through the pain that comes with the change, his appearance turning into someone else’s. Perhaps his luck didn’t run out when he met Potter, he rarely makes this much in a single day. He doesn’t even have time to change or shower, so he just straightens his tie, kisses Pans’ cheek, and sweeps through the kitchen into the Floo.

“Good evening,” Draco says, taking in the wide shoulders and Miller’s face, wrinkled around the eyes like an old jacket. Well, at least now he can say he’s sure of three things, the first one being that Miller overtly doubles him in age, and the second one that he doesn’t look too amiable towards him. He’s thinking the third one might be that he’s not one of those people where one can say, ‘Yes, I think he’s aged quite gracefully’, while not feeling like a complete con artist. He’s wearing a Muggle shirt, like Draco, only his looks quite a bit more expensive. Draco’s guess is he might work in finance, commercial banking or something like that. Pansy was right though, both him and his place look rather well-to-do.

“You are late,” Miller grumbles.

Draco does try to keep both of them down, but apparently one of his eyebrows has life itself: it seems to rise without previous command. Admittedly, scolding someone for not being on time—even though this one time it’s perhaps warranted—is not the best way to welcome anyone. “My apologies,” Draco says. “I just got the appointment.”

Miller scratches his chin. It looks like he’s been growing that beard for a real long while. Somehow, seeing that forces Draco’s nose to crumple. He’s never liked bearded people too much, they mar his skin with tiny pink tears and he’s suddenly feeling quite glad Pansy thought to charge him extra.

“They told me you’ve just been hired,” says Miller, eyes narrowed.

For a moment there, Draco can almost see the tiny wheels turning in his head. It makes him realise he’s almost fouled things up there. Merlin, Pansy would skin him slowly if she ever found out, so he tries, “I mean to work, I was late to work.” A little smile. He’s kind of trying to act like a newbie here when he barely recalls how that felt. Isn’t that a laugh? “This is really my first date.” Cross your fingers and hope it works. “I had to go to Gringotts first, sadly they kept me there quite a while.”

Miller seems satisfied enough with his answer, but remains quiet. Draco wonders, for a second, if he’s going to have to do all the work here, at least until he concludes that _yes, obviously_ and he plasters a smile on his face. “How do you want us to start?”

Honestly, he’d much rather they wouldn’t, mostly because he is no longer sure what he ‘wants’ them to do at all. Certainly not fucking. This bloke is huge, and keeps looking at him weirdly for some odd reason, and it’s kind of making him worry. Is his suit filthy or something? It shouldn’t be, he cast a Scouring Charm on it before he left his last date.

Anyway. Draco breathes out, slowly. It’s what he’s here for, isn’t it? A shag. Best to get it over with, then.

Miller leaves his glass on the table. “Strip,” he orders. “I want to see you naked.”

Draco raises his eyebrows, because right, sure, he can do that, and it’s not as if he’s contemplating that all of this is going too fast. Perhaps he’d be, he reckons, if he were really new at this, but he isn’t. Then he guesses he can add a fourth point to his list because, clearly, this bloke here seems to love commanding people around. Unfortunately, Draco happens to be not too fond of them commanding blokes, and by now he’s kind of wishing Pansy has tripled his bill, no matter how unlikely it seems to be. Still, he steps out of his shoes and takes his jacket off.

He hopes Miller isn’t waiting for a show here, because giving him one is not even remotely among his plans.

Meanwhile, Miller leans back into the soft leather of the couch he’s sitting on, crosses his legs and waits. Waits for Draco to be naked, surely, at least if the stare he’s giving him is anything to go by, watching as cloth by cloth removed leaves Draco’s body on display for him.

“Good,” he says when Draco is done. For a weird moment there, Draco thinks of the sport horses for sale he saw back in Galway, when Father took him there. Oddly enough, he feels quite like one of them right now. Like he’s finally passed a trial of some sort.

Miller gestures towards the couch. However, when Draco takes a couple of steps, he says, “No. Not walking.” 

Draco blinks. 

“Crawl,” Miller demands. 

Draco’s lips nervously curl upwards into a smile, a smile that’s more of a grimace than a grin. “Excuse me?” 

“Crawl over here,” he repeats, a cold smirk on his face, “like the whore you are.” 

Draco stares at him, indecision clouding through his thoughts.

“Are you deaf or are you dense? On your hands and knees. I imagine you know how it’s done, don’t you?”

After a controlled intake of breath, Draco swallows, and lets himself fall to his knees.

That’s pretty much how the whole date goes, with Miller calling him unpleasant things, and treating him like he’s rubbish taken out of someone else’s can, and it keeps going like that until Miller tries to tie him to the bed. “I’m sorry,” Draco says. “I don’t do that.”

Miller looks at him like he’s crazy, like he doesn’t see why on Earth Draco wouldn’t want to be tied up, like this is part of his job, this is what he gets paid for, isn’t it? And it’s also his job to be a tiny bit more obliging towards his clients. “Anything else you won’t do?” he enquires. “I’m assuming you do at least take it up the arse. Otherwise, I’m not sure what I paid for here.”

Draco chews on his lip. Yes, but not tied up. He doesn’t like—doesn’t _want_ to be tied up. He knows what some of his customers would do to him if they could, if they knew who he is, and after another swallow, he manages to mumble, “Yes, I do take it up the arse.” He keeps the _Thank you, you massive plonker_ quiet, because he doesn’t see it leading him anywhere good.

Miller gives him a long, even look. “Do you?”

“Yes, just not with…” He makes a gesture, grabs his own wrist. He’s not even sure what he’s trying to imply here, other than anything, but please no ropes involved.

“Bend over the back of the couch.”

Draco nods. He gets with the rhythm there, that’s easy enough. He’s going to let this bloke grope his arse and his back while he’s thrusting away. He’s just going to keep his eyes shut, too, while he tries to get the flipping panic under control, because he’s already had a flashback today and, frankly, he could do without two. He thinks he’s getting there, somewhat nearby quiet and calm, when his whole body starts to hurt like every single bit of him is bruised.

His first thought there is, _This cannot be happening_. Soon followed by, _I drank a failed potion_. Pansy claims they’re good, but since they’re sold illegally… They don’t even know who brewed them. For all he knows, Nott—or worse, Longbottom.

He tries to Apparate away, but there are hands on him and pain keeps him still. It’s what Polyjuice does: hurts like hell, feels like a roll of fire burning up his spine and he hates it. “Let me go,” he says, voice cracking high and helpless. “Please, let me…”

He doesn’t even know what he’s asking, what right he’s got, and Miller blinks at him, slowly, like nothing here makes sense, until he sees it…

“I knew it,” he says, a hint of triumph in his voice. Thrusts coming down harder, thick and steady. “I fucking knew it. A Death Eater trying to charge me for… oh God… for shagging him, a fucking Death Eater!”

There’s a snort. More thrusting. Draco can’t breathe with his head held down. He can’t do anything, held in place by Miller’s hands holding his own behind his back. But he’s right. Once upon a time, Draco might have said something to uphold his honour, but his honour is gone. He’s nothing but a whore. Nothing is carved in stone, he has no shield against his anger but his own shame and he’s not stupid. He knows he’s just a concept to them—to Miller—and not a person. An idea to condemn. Something to censure. He has the mark on his wrist. Draco hates it too, likely as much as they do; he loathes everything it stands for, everything it involves. If only it could be removed, Merlin, he’d give his whole world for that, but… but they— _he_ can’t see it.

None of them could never see it.

“You lot—” A moan. “You have—not a bit of integrity, do you?” There’s a ragged breath behind him. Miller thrusts back in, hard, really hard. It kind of hurts. “Bloody… Malfoy.”

One of his hands on Draco’s hip, pulling him back onto his prick. He feels a shift behind him. The angle changes, the pace speeds up and up. The hand on his hips lifts and comes heavy between his shoulder blades, pinning him in place to take the final few pushes inside him. There’s a cut-off moan. A sigh. Miller stills, and then there is just breathing.

Done. He’s done, Draco thinks, hopes. Please, let him be done. Please…

The hand on his back lifts, leaves a bit of sweat that cools quickly, and Miller finally pulls out. Draco backs away, edging towards the bed, snatching off his shirt and backing away again. Backing away until he’s trapped by the coffee table, and the hateful eyes that won’t leave his figure no matter what.

“I’m sorry,” Draco says. “I’m really sorry. Please don’t…” … _hurt me_. Merlin, he can’t say that. It sounds pathetic. Besides, it’s not like it’s going to stop him, is it?

Miller moves closer.

And then Draco’s jaw snaps shut as a fist crushes the side of his face. He falls to the floor, cradling his chin. Stunned, wounded. Drained.

He recalls curling into a shivering bundle as he tried to shut the world out.

If Miller wants him dead, well… he’s quit opposing.


	2. Chapter 2

Draco can’t remember how he got to St. Mungo’s fourth floor. He remembers almost nothing on how Potter got there. Most of what he remembers is the short conversation he half-heard while his stretcher flew through long corridors, and his own eyes swayed between now open, next second shut.

“Who’s the Healer on call?” he heard a woman saying, somewhere nearby. Another voice answered back. A man, he thinks, but it was too far and too diluted for Draco to make sense of diffident sounds and misheard words. He remembers blinking his eyes open then. The woman’s wand seemed to be glowing. Travelling around his torso, there was a warm ball of bluish light. It felt good. For a moment there, Draco felt so peaceful, unconcerned by anything else. “Well, tell him to get here _now_ ,” the woman said, just before Draco passed out.

At least he knows he’s kept his side of the promise he made himself, months ago. He’s kept his distance from Potter, even if Potter is standing here right now, pushing his head back to stop the bleeding. Draco kept true to his word.

It’s rather the world around him who can’t keep true to its own. But then again, it’s never been a mutual promise. And the world, it seems, has its own plans, regardless of how Draco feels about them. A thought keeps creeping into his mind: it’s not his fault he’s here today. Draco chuckles lowly, like the maddest of the mad—it makes his back hurt a bit when he moves, he’s not sure why. Frankly, he’s not sure it’s anyone’s fault that he’s here, except perhaps Miller’s, and Miller is not here, the bastard.

He should just blame his nonexistent luck.

“What are you… Malfoy, hold still, for Christ’s sake!”

Merlin, Potter, swearing on Muggle gods, are you? Draco judges, like the judgy critic he used to be. Only, for a moment he recalls Miller’s stare and shivers, because he’s no longer that, and now he seems closer to be the aim more than the referee.

“Lie back down, please. Try to hold your face up…”

Potter really sounds quite desperate. Why, Draco wonders, why indeed. Why would Potter be frenzied over an escort getting hurt on the job? It happens every day, especially when said escort just turns out to be Draco Malfoy. But then again, Potter doesn’t know the full story, does he? He’s such a… bloody Gryffindor, that’s what he is. Draco should hate them—hate _him_ —because they’re partly at fault here, his life wouldn’t be what it is if they didn’t exist.

But somehow, he can’t quite get there, not right now. Something fragile flutters in his chest, under Potter’s gentle prods, something he’s quite sure is long-term fatal. Draco has never been a risk taker, so he shoves it down and pretends its not there.

“I think I’ve managed to stop the bleeding,” Potter says. “How are you feeling?”

Draco stares at his own face, reflected on Potter’s spectacles. He wants to cry. He wants to laugh. He doesn’t know what he wants. _Startled_ , he thinks. Confused, injured. He’s gotten his share of slaps and punches over the years, especially during the last one, yet he’s never looked quite like this. A bruised lip. He can’t even open one of his eyes. His skin hurts when he touches it—marred all over, he guesses. He also guesses he should be glad Miller mostly stuck to physical strength, glad the worst he got were a couple of stunning spells and a curse—which, luckily, wasn’t _Crucio_.

How is he feeling indeed.

Partly glad, partly humiliated too. He doesn’t want to tell Potter that though, so he goes with, “Alive.” And a bit awkward, a bit confused. “Nothing hurts if I stay put,” he says, in doubt, figuring that might be the spell the woman cast on him downstairs. Then, he recalls reading Potter worked at Spell Damage and adds, “I guess you’re not too bad at this whole healing thing you do for a living.”

Potter looks at his face then, and they share a small smile about nothing in particular, except perhaps the fact that they’re both out-balanced here, or the fact that he’s just complimented Potter on his job, and where the hell did that come from?

“What do you know, there’s truth to some clichés,” Potter says. Then, he gives Draco a long look. “What happened to you?”

Draco shakes his head. “Nothing,” he mumbles, though he really means _something you’re best not knowing_. Thinks about what Pansy said. _I doubt he’d ever let you starve_. Her, _You’ll never know unless you try_. He swallows, because perhaps a thank you will be worth it in the long run. Even if it’s to Potter, who he’s not too keen on thanking, considering he once slashed his chest open on a whim.

Somehow, his ‘nothing’ prompts Potter to snort. “Right. That must be the reason you wound up here. Because nothing happened, and life’s just peachy.”

“Thank you for, you know…” Draco pauses, gesturing towards his face, which is now healing but was once broken. He doesn’t want to say _helping me_ , but he means that. He doesn’t want to say _for healing me_ , but he means that too. It’s almost a miracle this whole conversation is tumblingly moving forwards when he can’t— _won’t_ even word his thoughts _right_. Then again, when have they ever tried to talk before? Without spells, blasphemy and insults involved.

Once, perhaps, back in first year, when he tried to shake hands with Potter. If he recalls correctly, that didn’t exactly work out well. At least not for Draco.

“It’s all right,” Potter finishes his sentence when the pause gets a bit too long, “you don’t have to tell me. I was just curious.”

“Funny that…”

And that’s the last thing Draco remembers saying. Mostly because he was too tired, too empty. He’s not what he used to be—the fighter in him died screaming a long, long time ago. Let him do what he wants sang to him, so he shut his eyes and swang to the rhymes of nothing, till nothing becomes all in a world made of dreams. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go back there. Just as he’s not sure he wants to be awake.

In the end Pansy’s suggestion turns into a plan by itself, mostly by twists of fate. Draco’s actions have very little to do with it. It just so happens Potter thinks he’s in an abusive relationship. “I think it was his boyfriend. He must have beat him up,” Draco hears him tell one of his mediwizards.

“You think?” the mediwizard asks kindly.

“I’ve had to heal him all over. It was quite brutal what was done to him,” says Potter, a hint of concern hidden deep in his voice. “His muscles were—”

Sadly, the mediwizard picks that instant to push a tray shut, blocking Potter’s voice from his ears.

“There were—” Potter pauses “—signs,” and his voice sounds quite odd, quite unfitting. Like he’s actually _concerned_. “Signs that he may have been quite…” Draco pictures his brows puddled mid-forehead, that face Potter makes when he’s thinking hard about something. He guesses he’s trying to find a word here, one that would make that night sound quite lighter than it was—then again, Potter doesn’t know how it was. He doesn’t know how Draco feels about it.

 _Useless, even more useless than your father_.

And, honestly, he doesn’t think that tiny moment when shame ate him whole, is something he needs to share with Potter. He wouldn’t even be able to tell Pansy, and he trusts her much more than _him_. Well, on second thought, occasionally, and certainly not always.

“Rather intimate,” says Potter, finally, “with someone that night.” It puts a smirk on Draco’s face.

It seems like Potter has some issues when it comes to broadcasting Draco’s gayness to the whole floor, and it’s funny, because Potter also appears to think he’s got nothing left to go back to but that bloke. Potter actually thinks _that_ is the main reason Draco kept staying at that lovely gentleman’s place, the lovely gentleman whose fists sent him to hospital. Draco feeds that, of course.

He decides, damn him, that this is not going to affect him, that self-blame is for others and not for him, and he’s not going to blame himself over lying to Potter. Not when Potter deserves every lie Draco can make him swallow, because he’s partly at fault here, though Draco’s not too sure _how_ , exactly. Can’t put together a real reason, but he’s quite sure there _must_ be one. One that he just can’t recall, somehow. So he opens his mouth, and lets lie after lie flow out in a way that’s almost music to his ears. “I have nowhere else to go.”

As if. But Potter nods, and that prompts Draco to keep going.

“The Ministry… you were there when they read my sentence. They took all my parents’ properties. It’s not like I have a home I can return to.” He marvels at how easy faking truth happens to be, when it all comes much easier than the lies he has to tell daily. Please sir, fuck me harder, oh yes, I love it when you do that, do it again. It’s a complete mystery how lies jump to his tongue and out, how they won’t stop coming. He doesn’t even know how to _feel_ about it—the guilt he’s not feeling will crush him but, Merlin’s saggy balls, he’ll die in joy if this all works. “He was all I had. Most days he was quite—”

“He really wasn’t caring. _Don’t_ say he was caring.” Potter rubs his neck in a slightly self-conscious gesture. “I should have thought… they sent all Death Eaters to—”

“Azkaban, I know,” Draco breaks in. “But I wasn’t one by choice. You, of all people, should know that.”

“I did. I _do_ , that’s why I asked them not to. Somehow, it never occurred to me that you’d end up—”

“They took my life away, Potter.” Honestly, guilt is being truly unreasonable here. He shouldn’t feel it now, not when that part is true. “I can’t even find a decent job. I can’t… I have _nothing_ ,” as is that one. “And no one except him. At least he let me live there, and that’s something most people weren’t willing to do.”

Draco can’t even contemplate telling Potter the biggest lie of all. He once told him, it’s not forgotten; Potter just doesn’t know it’s actually him, the lad who lost it in the loo. The thought nearly makes him giggle, though it shouldn’t since it was no fun at all.

Potter mutters something he can’t quite get, though it rather sounds like ‘in exchange for sex’, and Draco’s quite sure the last part includes ‘bloody tosser’. Then, Potter takes off his glasses, and rubs his nose.

It’s not a bad look on him, minus the spectacles. Almost passable, Draco thinks.

“You can stay at Grimmauld for a while,” Potter offers. “Just until you’re back on your feet.” He looks a bit nervous, from the awkward tilt of his hips, to the anxious way he’s holding Draco’s chart. “I don’t know if you can cook, there’s a kitchen there… or, I guess, you can ask Kreacher to make you something edible,” he says, face screwed up. “Though I have to admit he’s not exactly good at it, most of what _he_ cooks I can’t even swallow.”

“That would be great,” Draco says, his lips molding into a tiny smile. And that’s how it all starts. A thoughtful twist on the wheel of fortune, plenty of evasion, and a few fabrications on what’s true and what’s not, partly thanks to Potter, and to hope well-placed this time.

Damn his lacking luck to hell. Freedom comes, behold!

*** * ***

Some mornings, when Draco first wakes up, it takes him a moment or two to remember where he is. To remember his war days are over, that the present is something else that sometimes doesn’t hurt as much, though mostly it does. That there’s something missing, but he doesn’t know _what_ exactly.

Today is one of those days. The light coming in through the curtains registers before the brief confusion turns into panic, into shame, sometimes into shame of panicking over memories past long gone, and things he can’t remember anymore. Neither of those emotions is too flattering to go through. But he does know this bedroom. He’s been here before, with Mother.

The House of Black.

He’d have inherited it, if it weren’t for its last owner changing the will to include Potter. It’s always smelled a bit funny, like stale cloth and dust. He’s always assumed it must have been the emptiness: his first cousin once removed being locked up in Azkaban, the rest of the Blacks who ever lived here, dead, disinherited. Or perhaps like Mother or that mingebag aunt of his, both of them married to someone else. Now though, he’s assuming Potter might be the one at fault: it’s technically his, and it still smells ghastly. In fact, perhaps Draco should have a chat with him—or with his house-elf, whatever it is its called.

Potter must have brought him here, when he fell asleep after their talk… he shudders. Then, he sighs. Miller is best left in the box where forgotten memories are kept, along with Crabbe, _you an’ yer dad are finished_ , and the Fiendfyre Potter saved him from. So he curls away from the light, pulling the blanket back over his shoulders—it’s a bit chilly after all.

He should Floo Pansy, let her know where he is, and that he’s whole and well and his spine is not missing. Let her know he’s still alive. She must be worried sick, he’s been missing for several days now. Besides, she might even be pleased that he’s at Potter’s. Just a few more minutes, he thinks, because he’s tired, because it’s calm and quiet and safe, and because Potter isn’t here. And because he can. Perhaps Pans was right, after all. Potter offered his place, he brought him here without waking him up. He let him sleep. Potter even thought to throw a blanket over him.

Draco suddenly feels like a blushing boy again. It’s quite ridiculous if one considers what he’s been up to these past few months, but none of his dates ever cared enough to make him _comfortable_. Lost in those thoughts, he dozes off.

The next time he wakes up it’s because his hair is tickling his nose, and there’s a constant noise in the background that sounds quite a bit like the scribbling of a quill on parchment, so he rolls on his back, stretches, and sits up. The floor feels cold beneath his naked feet.

Potter pauses in his writing. “You woke up.”

Draco looks around the dusty room. He looks at Potter, crouched by the side table next to the bed where Draco’s been sleeping for… he doesn’t even know how long. Hours? Ages? He’s not sure what to say here, he’s just considering mentioning the weather, when Potter offers, “It’s getting late.”

That’s when Draco realises he’s been staring at him for quite a while. “It’s…” He clears his throat, as quietly as he can. “Yeah, it is. A bit.”

“I just stopped by to check on you. How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” Potter’s look is subtle enough. Draco does catch it, though. Up and down, but not derisive. “Much better than before.”

“Good. That’s…” Potter says, his eyes pausing minutely at Draco’s lips, with a hint of something that looks a tiny bit like attraction. Could it be? Draco wonders. Is Potter actually attracted to him? “That’s… that’s good.”

Draco licks his lips, leaves them half-open because he can, because he wants to see what it does to Potter. Relief rushes through him when Potter swallows and looks away. Perhaps Pans was right about him. Perhaps he is into Draco, perhaps Draco can sway him. Perhaps, just perhaps, Potter is actually interested on that whole swaying thing, as long as Draco is the one doing the swaying. Wouldn’t that be nice? And easy, too; Draco by now knows quite a bit how all that works and whatnot. Plus, he wouldn’t be too opposed.

Potter rolls up his parchment. “I have to go back home.”

 _Back to her_ , Draco’s mind whispers, back to Weasel’s sis. But he smiles a wry smile, and says, “Sure. Don’t let me keep you.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” says Potter, looking a bit puzzled, a little lost.

There’s a glimpse of Potter’s mouth turning upwards before he leaves, and that’s good enough for now. _Don’t let me keep you_ … just yet. But Draco thinks, slightly maliciously, that he’ll make that smile grow larger in time, have Potter gift his heart to him for he deserves it, as payment for the misery Draco’s life has turned into—which is not truly Potter’s fault, but some parts of it are.

Potter might have been brave and all of that, but guiltless is stretching the word a bit too far.

Draco has dinner that night, his body finally remembering about real food, missed lunches taken through spells at St. Mungo’s. Once that’s done, he calls Pansy through the Floo. After serenely—as if—listening to her, “Where the hell are you?” and her over-the-top, gasp included, “I thought you were…”

When he finally manages to get a word in, he says, “I had a bit of a mishap,” and launches into a full explanation, (obviously leaving out all things on Miller and the gory details of his visit there), which only ends when he gets to, “I’m at one of his properties now.”

“My, my,” she says, and maybe it is after all. My, my, release the grudge. Break now, or become stronger.

“I think you were right about him,” he says. “I think he’s—” a faint laugh on a breath, “—you know, _interested_.”

“Please,” she says. “Am I ever wrong? I’m guessing he’s been quite nice to you so far, taking you there and all…”

“Oh, he has.” Draco chuckles. More than, even. Potter healed him, brought him here—but then again, Pans is excessively proud of herself when it comes to seeing through other people, and Draco’s not too keen on feeding cats that, to his view, are already quite chubby, so he swallows that, brings up something else, and remembers to ask for his laptop. They end up talking and talking for ages, until she has to leave to one of her dates.

“Chop-chop then,” Draco tells her. It gets him a wink and a, “Win him over! Do your best.”

He smiles back, tries for reassuring. He’s not feeling it yet—reassured, himself, but he’ll get there soon enough. Because he’s not going to break. Potter, however…

*** * ***

Potter tends to drop by mid-afternoon, when he leaves his job. The first few times he brings food and some shopping. However, upon Draco’s complaints, he starts bringing the _Prophet_ too. Dismally enough, the paper comes time after time with his whimpers, and their accusative matching head shake. Potter’s whines seem to oscillate between “I honestly can’t believe I’m doing this,” and “Seriously…” Draco finds the first one side-splitting, especially since Potter seems to be purposely evading the ‘for you’ that often ends that sentence. Once, Potter even goes as far as to venture an, “I don’t even get what grabs your interest, when all they publish is crap.”

Draco, raising his brows, has to concede that much. It’s definitely crap, since Potter’s all they ever notice, but instead of agreeing with him, he reads aloud _Spell Gone Wrong: Potter Saves a Woman’s Life, Skilfully Regenerating Her Bone Marrow with the Power of His Mind_. Once he’s finished, he tells him, “I don’t know why you fret so much.” Fretting and fretting indeed, all while being everyone’s hero; it’s almost like Potter lives in a parallel universe, where he sees not what others think of him, the Lord of Lords. Merlin, Draco would give his life and more to have that much himself.

Upon Potter’s clearly audible gibbering, Draco shuts him up with a, “Is it my fault you prefer to remain oblivious to current events?” Mostly because ‘I like to pretend my life is normal’ isn’t something he’d like to share. At least not with Potter.

Potter ends up rolling his eyes upon Draco’s further complaints, mostly based on Potter’s lack of shopping skills, and sometimes on, “If you’re going to buy donuts, at least you could buy the ones covered in chocolate. They taste better than these ones.”

But whatever, Potter can go on with his eye-rolls.

*** * ***

**Shopping List #06**

*** * ***

On the sixteenth day however, either Potter is not on a very good mood, or his whole morning has been mud, blood and poppycock, (and therefore, not a very good mood), but when Draco reminds him, “You overlooked the sunglasses I asked for last time, remember? Classic style Aviators. Ray Ban sells them,” Potter grumbles, “What are you, an upper class hobo or what?”

Draco’s glance, in turn, drops venom. “So sorry for not being up to your magnificent standards,” he sneers. He’s really quite affronted. He doesn’t think he’s any of that, not anymore. In fact, he’s not even sure he’s ever been both at the same time, especially when those terms are basically opposites.

He flicks a quick look at Potter. Come to think of it, perhaps Potter is, as in his complete lack of poorness he still somehow manages to dress like a church mouse. In all honesty, all Draco wanted was to do the shopping himself, just so he could keep a small part of the change. He’s obviously not going to ask _that_ , because Potter might think it’s not ethical and whatnot, but Potter here is rolling in millions, and millions of millions, and he could certainly spare a few. Draco was merely hoping for some extra cash, mostly to pay back Pans for all the months she’s let him stay at hers. It’s not like he is going to ask _Potter_ for it, since it would bring up questions he can’t answer.

He’s obviously not going to tell Potter that he does have someone after all.

But, if Potter would rather believe falsehoods, Draco is certainly not planning to be the one to stop him. Then again, this whole relationship between them is based on a giant lie: Draco is clearly not an escort, and has never been one indeed! As a matter of fact, the only reason why he is still here is because—woe, poor self—his psycho boyfriend allegedly lost his temper, and somehow decided he might as well punch Draco’s face until his nose was pulped and he sagged to the ground, whimpering softly, his hands clenched around his chest.

_You failed, worthless…_

Draco shakes his head. No. Not that, not again.

So, point here? None at all. Mister Potter, all hail him, knows no fear and knows no danger, and apparently knows nothing at all. It’s not like adding tiny lies to that massive one is going to somehow unbalance their universe.

There’s a long pause, quite a bit of glaring involved. But afterwards, Potter says, “I’m sorry. You can have your sunglasses, okay?” and, “Look, why don’t you give your notes to Kreacher. He’ll do the shopping, and I’ll pay for it.”

And that would be fine. Not perfect, but it would work: Draco can at least do part of Pans’ shopping for her. It’s not like he expects Potter to read his notes after all, they’re not that interesting, so he says, “Yes, all right.”

Later that day, Draco thinks about the whole conversation and regrets almost instantly agreeing to what Potter said. Agreeing to it might mean Potter not needing to drop by so often, a large step backwards on his whole wooing Potter plan. It’s just a shame his plan got somehow, someway lost during that convo, partly thanks to all the glaring that seemed to sway his mind elsewhere. More towards _kill him in his sleep_ than towards _his heart, yours_.

Except Potter does still come often. Only, now he brings beers instead of shopping, and seems slightly put out when Draco won’t even open his. For some odd reason Draco doesn’t quite get, that mere fact seems to press him to offer an explanation: “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the effort, I’m just not all that into beer.”

It’s not quite an apology, but it’s certainly getting too close to one to feel anywhere near right for him. It’s enough for Draco to pull back and try to remember Potter is _partly at fault_ here, because it’s all changing too fast and he’s not sure he likes where it’s going. Not when it makes his chest ache.

“None of them?”

Draco shakes his head.

Potter lifts both eyebrows. “What about stout? Guinness?”

Draco shrugs. He’s not even sure what Guinness is—not to worry, he’ll search it once Potter’s gone—but it reminds him he needs to be the one in power here. Control. He doesn’t want Potter subjugated exactly, just at his mercy, so he tries, “I like Italian sparkling wine. Lambrusco tastes quite well.”

The next day Potter brings a beer for himself, as usual… and a bottle of Vigneto Saetti for Draco.

And Draco… Draco finds it hard to believe, especially to believe this is happening to him—him, the boy who lost his luck in a gamble for friendship that turned out wrong, and has been regretting it ever since. Particularly since he knows that brand is quite a bit more expensive than a mere bottle of beer, and Potter still bought it. For him. Because Draco likes it. Even though it was never on his shopping lists. For a moment there he recalls what he wanted as a child—friends, legitimate admiration. And this… this feels pretty close to that, doesn’t it?

But those were child dreams. He’s left childhood behind ages ago. None of what he’s had to do these past few years feels like childhood anymore. So he swallows his heart and the pride he lacks, smiles back at Potter and says, “That’s really nice of you. Thank you.”

And from then on, from time to time, Potter brings him a new bottle.

Draco sips at his wine while he tries to imagine Potter at his job, which is what he usually talks about. Frankly, there’s too much blood in it to be anywhere near pleasant, so he tries other things, which tend to include picturing Potter naked and moaning all spread out on Regulus’ bed. He once tried to picture Potter as one of the trolls on YouTube, surprising himself when he ended up laughing. Potter produced one of his deep grins, and Draco raised his glass at him, quite glad no _Legilimency_ is being cast, mostly because Potter must have said something funny while Draco was lost in thoughts. And, at least this way, no explanations are required.

“Your wife doesn’t mind you coming here almost everyday?” he asks once, sprawling out on the far side of the couch from Potter. His feet are barely inches from Potter’s own. Draco wonders, could he, or could he not? Does Potter want to be touched? Should he… after all, it would only be a couple of inches. He could always pretend he didn’t mean to; we all make the occasional mistake.

Potter shrugs in reply to his question. “She knows some days I have to work late.”

“Really?” Draco raises an eyebrow. “Am I supposed to be part of your work, then? Because last time I checked, this was not St. Mungo’s.”

“Well,” Potter says vaguely, “likely ‘cause it’s not.”

“So, basically, you’ve been lying to her all along.” Draco’s not sure why or how, but something inside him leaps, quite pleased. Even the Bravest and Greatest Gryffindor still has some secrets to hide, and one of them just happens to be him.

“Not really.” Potter’s thick eyebrows draw together into a massive frown mid-forehead. “Well, perhaps. Maybe.”

Draco finds the whole scene utterly hilarious because _perhaps, maybe_ means Potter has been lying, and what’s best of it is that _he knows he has_. “Does she even know I’m here?”

A shrug. “Not through me.”

“Who’d have thought! Harry Potter, the master of lies.” But Draco isn’t thinking that, not then. In fact, his thinking mostly includes that perhaps he should do that thing with his foot, and why not? Tiny movement, likely huge progress.

Hmm.

He slides his foot a tiny bit to the right, just until it’s barely brushing against Potter’s ankle. Nothing but a light caress.

Potter looks up at him and smiles. “Shut up,” he says, a thread of amusement in his tone.

Draco smiles too, quite entertained himself because that’s all it takes to seal the deal. He’s in. Potter, apparently, is too, and perfectly aware of where this is going.

When Potter isn’t there, Draco often wanders around the house. He’s been cleaning up a bit, though he has to admit Kreacher has done most of it. Kreacher, on his side, seems to adore Draco for some odd reason that eludes him. In any case, indolence equals joy in Draco’s mind these days, equals plenty of time to do other things he likes, and no time at all to do what he doesn’t. So, frankly, he’s more than glad to let Kreacher work. Who knows? Perhaps working is his thing. He really doesn’t look too joyful when he’s not bowing and bowing, and saying _thank you, Master Malfoy Sir_ , or _please, Master Malfoy Sir_.

Sometimes, Draco dances around the corridors, singing to himself Madonna’s _like a virgin, touched for the very first time_ , which is kind of priceless because he really, really isn’t. His first time was two years ago, and he doesn’t even like to think about how it went, so go figure…

He himself reckons Madonna isn’t exactly chaste herself either: he’s searched her pictures on Google Images and, said bluntly, her and virgin are quite hard to visualise on the same sentence. Unless the sentence reads ‘really not’. He heard her for the first time on his laptop, on some random YouTube video. Since then, he’s downloaded all her albums on this program called eMule—the one that has an odd donkey as its logo. He’s quite a huge fan. Wikipedia says that song came out when he was four, which is both comical and amazing: it took him sixteen years to find it, but now he knows he’s finally in love.

(Yes, with a song. Only this time it’s not some violin virtuoso born in Italy, almost three centuries ago. Muggles tend to call her the Queen of Pop on the Web. He often wonders, does that have anything to do with popcorn?)

His voice sometimes wakes up the lethargic droopy portraits on the walls of the corridor. They stretch and look down at him, with interest. “Isn’t that Narcissa’s son?” one of them whispers. “Indeed,” an old man wearing a tuxedo says, “I believe he is. What was his name?”

And then there’s Walburga’s, on the stairs’ crossing. Potter hid her behind a blanket. It’s sometimes fun to lift a corner just to watch Potter’s jaw drop. She praises Draco for things he’s not, but the face Potter makes is, seriously, priceless.

Draco talks to Pansy, sometimes. Mostly through the Floo, though she has come over twice. He has to be careful though, doesn’t want Potter to see her here, or else. He’s stopped having those horrible flashbacks. He is finally off those potions, and his insomnia no longer forces him to call on sleep nightly with a glass of Firewhisky. Instead, he gets to sulk and laugh, and be extremely Ab Fab—like the Muggle show—by listening to Muggle classics from the ’80s.

For the first time in his life, Draco thinks he might even be _happy_ , as odd as that is. Maybe because he’s free, or at least freer than he’s ever been.

However, he still hasn’t gone beyond touching Potter. He’s not sure if it’s out of respect—which, apparently, he now has, developed at some mysterious point he can’t quite place in time. Or perhaps… perhaps out of shame. Shame of himself. Potter doesn’t know what he is, what he’s done, how many men have had him. He treats him like he’s some poor abused little flower.

Draco never points out the faults in his reasoning. He tends to avoid introspection these days, mostly because he feels like a worthless whore, used up by everyone and… useless.

Useless, like the Dark Lord said.

It could even be both at the same time, he thinks. Respect _and_ shame. Reading his own feelings has never been one of his strengths.

*** * ***

It’s just one of Draco’s typical Saturdays. _Wake me up before you go-go_ plays on his laptop, and he’s all unwinded and loosed up, not in a hurry at all. There’s no rush, nothing to do today except maybe chill, and perhaps Floo Pansy. He does feel a bit lonely some days, and most weekends Harry doesn’t show. Unless he’s working, but Draco knows he’s not today. Which, he guesses, means the whole day for himself.

It was already quite late when he woke up. He’s showered and brushed his teeth, and he’s now trying to pick one among all the new polo shirts he’s been hoarding in Regulus’ wardrobe. He wants to wear the grey one on Monday, when Harry—bollocks, _Potter_ comes. Draco has to admit his petty thoughts have turned softer lately. He’s not sure why, but some days he catches himself thinking Potter does have some charm after all, that he may have been drawn in by it. Who knows?

It’s either that, or the bottles Potter paid for, or perhaps the touching, or sitting together on the couch. Or the way he treats him. It definitely has to be _something_ , because he used to resent him quite a bit more than he does.

He casts a last glance at the mirror and thinks, _Yes, definitely the grey one_. It makes Draco’s eyes stand out. He wants to look good for him, he wants Potter to be impressed, as in truly impressed, fascinated-level impressed. Honestly, he’s been longing for that for quite a while, he’s just missing the _how to_ get there: nothing he’s done so far has pushed Potter to take the first step. Draco knows quite well how to act when it comes to sex—years of practice and whatnot—but this whole _no-we’re-just-flirting-here_ situation has him more than a bit stumped. He’s still pondering that, when he hears an ‘ouch’ coming from downstairs.

In a rush, Draco shuts his laptop and hides it under the bed. Doesn’t want Potter to see it, wouldn’t like the questions that would come with it. Potter still thinks he’s like he was, explaining to him that Muggles are perhaps higher up the line than he’d once thought might take recognising a few things he’s not too proud of. He stops by the kitchen on his way to the sitting room and grabs a couple of glasses.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” he begins to say, but something about Potter’s posture looks… wrong. He’s too tense, too strained. “What happened?”

Harry— _Potter_ , blast him—shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“Are you sure? Doesn’t really look like nothing…”

“We…” Potter pauses, thinking for a moment, as if he’s not too sure he should be talking to Draco about… whatever it is he’s going to say. “We had a bit of a fight, Ginny and me.”

“A _fight_ fight”—Draco leaves the glasses on the nearest shelf—“or just an argument?”

Potter snorts. “No hexes thrown, I swear.”

“I see,” Draco says, his voice somewhere between disbelief and disappointment. Her Reducto used to be quite powerful. “So, an argument.”

“I just… I don’t know. See, sometimes I don’t think she gets me at all.”

Ignoring the bright glare coming in through the windows that’s beginning to hurt his eyes, Draco takes a few steps towards Potter. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we are too different. I mean it’s just not working. I don’t really know why. I tried, you know? It’s just _not_.” Potter sighs. “You know, I thought I’d die that day, when I faced Voldemort.”

Draco shivers, recalls the curse cast on that name. Recalls _useless_. Somehow, hearing it now, again feels awful; he’s not even able to say it himself. “You didn’t though.” He’s not even sure he’s ever wished for Potter’s death—he’s definitely sure he didn’t wish for it _then_ , not against the Dark Lord. He doesn’t even want to imagine a world where the Dark Lord wins the war. The Dark Lord _deserves_ to be dead. Potter, however, doesn’t.

“No, I didn’t,” Potter says, quite dejectedly, “but sometimes I wish I had. I wouldn’t have to remember other people dying around me, people I _cared_ about.”

Draco bites his lip. He thinks about his family, about Mother, sent to Azkaban after the war. Yes, all right, it’s not what Potter means, but he thinks he quite gets it. Weasel’s sister must as well: she was there too, she fought the Dark Lord’s army during the final battle. “I’m quite sure she cares too.”

“I know she _does_.” Potter shakes his head. “But it’s not the same, not the way I do.”

Still, Draco doesn’t really think that’s the issue here. He rather thinks Harry’s got it all wrong, and the issue is something else, something having to do with the distracted looks he catches Potter giving him, a mixture of attraction and want hidden behind them, that he’s quite sure his wife is not getting. At least not from Potter.

“I’ve tried to explain this to her. She just doesn’t get it,” he says.

“Are you, you know, happy…” Draco swallows. Somehow saying that word brings up a huge pang of hurt inside him, as if his own heart were bruised and bleeding, and he doesn’t know why or how it’s happening, but it _is_. Like something in there is missing, deleted, erased, something that used to be and isn’t, and he knows not what or when.

Potter doesn’t answer. He remains quiet.

“Does your wife make you happy? Are you still… glad she chose you, and not someone else?”

“Happy and glad are such blurry concepts.” Potter turns towards the window, arms crossed over his chest. “Maybe she does, sometimes. Maybe I am.”

“But not all the time. Not today, not now.”

“Obviously not now.”

Draco watches him, watches the uniform row of houses across the glass, under the sun that burns his eyes.

 _Obviously not now_. The phrase echoes in his head. _Sod it_ , he thinks, because this is it, because now’s the time: it’s now or never, jump ahead or be left behind. He exhales slowly, until there’s nothing in his head but this, here, what he’s going to do. He moves closer to Potter, closer still until their bodies touch, front to back.

Potter stays still. Not moving closer, not moving away.

“See, I don’t think she does make you happy, I don’t think she can.” Wrapping his arms around Potter’s waist, Draco says, “I don’t think you are, I don’t even think she’s what you want.” Every syllable, every word, brushing his lips gently against one side of Potter’s throat. “I think you want this. I think…” Potter draws in air, his chest pressing against the skin of Draco’s arms. “I think you want me,” Draco murmurs against his neck. There’s a gasp for answer, and somehow that gives him the courage he’s always lacked. “You want _me_ , not her.”

Potter turns around. A forceful kiss, just what Draco kept wanting for the past two months. Somehow it feels oddly familiar, like they’ve done this before, though Draco can’t recall when exactly since they’ve always been enemies. Even if Draco sometimes thinks he’d have liked things to go differently between them, if only Potter had said ‘Hello’ that day, back on first year…

But he didn’t. He didn't, he just sided with Weasel, against him.

Draco gets pushed back, until his knees touch the edge of a couch and they fall backwards. Or rather, he falls backwards, Potter on top of him. It’s turning Draco on quite a bit to figure out this stuff, it’s weird because he thinks he knows it. It feels like this isn’t the first time this happens, but it _has_ to be. He has a long list of people he’s slept with; Potter is definitely not one of them, but to have him wriggle against him, pressing their hips tight together whenever Draco finds a good spot to suck on, Merlin. It’s pretty much like heaven rediscovered, and Draco is quite pleased with that. He’s only just found out Potter likes having his neck kissed—did he know that already?

It feels a bit like he did.

Either way he’s quite in with that, he likes it too, if only…

“Wait…” For a moment Potter tenses up, like he’s about to move away. Then, he settles, concentration showing on his face. “It’s not you, I just… I don’t think we should do this, not when she doesn’t know.”

Salazar, that, again. Potter and his bollocksed principles.

“But we _can_ ,” Draco says, ignoring shame poking its head in the back of his brain, “and you _want to_.” He slips his hand down, slowly enough that Potter can easily stop him if he wants to. But Potter doesn’t. Potter just bites his bottom lip when Draco wraps his hand around him. “And I’d like to. Please…”

_Please don’t say no._

Weird to think that this is the first time he really touches Potter’s cock. Weird how much it suddenly seems to matter. He used to touch men’s pricks every single day, and it has never made him feel like he’s feeling right now, like it means _something_ , somehow.

Perhaps it does.

“Let me do this,” Draco says. “I want to.” Oddly enough, he’s not lying this time. He wouldn’t now, he thinks he’s past lying; lying’s left behind last month, when he actually began caring. And he knows what Potter’s thinking and why his eyes look dark and anxious. But this is different. He’s not his wife, but he knows Potter wants him. He gives Potter a little stroke. His hips jerk before he makes himself still.

Draco is barely breathing.

Then Potter brushes the hair out of Draco’s forehead, like he needs to know something, quite frantically. Draco knows not what it is, but it seems to be there, in his eyes, so he smiles a little smile and pushes Potter off him. Then, he bends his head and gives the tip of Potter’s prick a tiny lick, just enough to prove his point. When he looks up to see Potter’s face, his eyes are shut.

“I think you’re liking this quite a bit,” Draco says.

Potter’s eyes snap open, looking down at him instantly.

“Or quite a lot, rather…” Draco adds, a filthy smile on his face, and that finally goes through the cover up Potter is trying to keep. At last, Potter cracks a smile. At last, Potter touches him again, remorse left behind with Weasel’s sis and the fight.

There are gentle hands on his arms, a nervous trail of fingers over his shoulders. It’s a good sign, Draco thinks, and holds Potter’s eyes as long as he can before giving his prick another lick. He tries a bit of suction. Potter chokes a breath above him, his cock finally thickening, again, and that’s good too. That’s fantastic, because at least he’s doing something _right_ here, even if what he’s doing right is actually sucking some bloke’s prick, because at least that bloke is Potter and it’s been ages since he’s felt like this.

Draco opens his mouth and goes down, all the way down. There’s a little sound from Potter he thinks he’s heard before, all small and desperate. It’s kind of exciting. Draco can’t remember the last time he listened so hard, or was so keen on others reactions. He never felt like this with his dates, but this is different. This here… this _matters_ to him.

The rest of this is, well… what it usually is. He’s done this so much and so often, it hardly matters anymore. Only, Potter feels good like this, and that’s relevant. It’s like their souls are somehow connected, he doesn’t know how, doesn’t know when or why. And whenever Potter makes that thin airless sound—like a gasp strangled, a moan stifled—Draco knows he wants more of it. He wants to hear it again, and louder. He wants Potter to moan, to let go. And Potter… Potter _is_ letting go, he’s letting go fully, and that’s good too. That’s great, Draco thinks, because at last he feels like winning might be possible in this game of theirs, and that his luck is not all lost.

Some of it must be still running to have even reached this point, where there’s no backwards and no off, only forwards, _yes_ , and keep going.

Draco licks his cock in a long tease. Potter’s thighs shiver, spread out easy. It’s perfect, it’s absolutely perfect, because Draco’s world is now flawless, and finally moving _forwards_ at exactly the right pace. What truly amazes Draco is that it’s not the last time. What starts with a blow job in the sitting room, soon moves into shagging in the kitchen. Potter bending him over a table, Potter’s tongue doing things down there—marvellous things, mind you, but still things down there, things a supposedly heterosexual Gryffindor might not be too proud of doing if the _Prophet’_ s reporters ever found out.

Potter, however, never seems too opposed.

Not even when Draco drags him over to Regulus’ bedroom and has his fun there, with his conjured ropes that, for some odd reason, Potter trusts and at last, _finally_ , a bed. They talk little and shag much. It’s amazing, Draco thinks, because while the sex is breathtaking, he’s not too sure a chat would lead them anywhere useful.

And he’s delighted.

His life, for once, seems worth living. Here’s to hoping it will stay this way for a long time.


	3. Chapter 3

“You seem to be putting on weight,” Pansy insinuates, shuffling closer to him on Potter’s rather large sofa. She lies down, her head resting comfortably on Draco’s thighs.

“You think?” Draco looks down at his stomach. It looks pretty much as it’s looked for a while. A bit larger than usual, but still, that’s not a good reason to call him fat to his face.

“Definitely. You used to be like this,” she says, holding up her pinky, “and now… what, Potter hasn’t noticed yet?”

Draco raises one shoulder.

“Really. He must be freaking blind. Even I can see it, and he gets to see you daily,” she goes on. “Puh—lease. You _must_ have noticed. Aren’t those trousers a bit on the tight side now? Considering—”

“They fit perfectly,” he grouses, though they are a bit on the tight side lately, as she’s put it. “Thank you so much for your kind observation.”

“Right, sure,” she says slowly, both her eyebrows raised in a pointed look. “Only, somehow, you don’t sound too thankful.”

“And besides—” Draco shrugs again “—it’s not like there’s that much talking going on.”

“Indeed, why would there be?”

Draco raises an eyebrow. “Are you actually jealous of him, or just trying to wind me up?”

“Me? Oh, no. I bet he’s quite pleased with you—”

“Oh, dear. You _are_ jealous.”

“—all heated up and willing to grab your ankles in a moment—”

“Merlin, Pans,” he snaps, pushing her off his lap. “It’s not—I don’t do that, all right? I swear some days you are unbearable…”

“No,” she interrupts. “No, _you_ shut up and listen. I don’t want you to mess this up again, you already did once and it nearly—” She grabs his wrist, pulling him back. “Listen to me, you twat. Do you remember what you said to me back in sixth year?”

“Of course I don’t,” he sneers. “Sixth year was ages ago!” And a rather long time to be able to remember anything at all. She’s going to have to be a bit more specific.

“When you got sloshed up on the roof, after the Dark Lord ordered you to fix that cabinet. You tried and tried and nothing worked, and one day you lost it, you stole one bottle of Finnigan’s Firewhisky and dragged me all the way up to—”

Oh, then. “What did I say?”

“You don’t remember?” She shakes her head with a small laugh. “You honestly can’t remember.”

“Not really, no.” He’d always assumed he’d told her cocks made his world go round, or something like that. But what if he hadn’t. What if that was not what he said, what if…

“Well.” Pansy laughs, again, but there’s something dangerously desperate in it. “This is huge. Massive, even.”

For a second there, Draco feels as if he’s being studied. She’s looking at him with very serious eyebrows. He knows the room is quite hot, but he suddenly feels cold inside. Inhospitably cold. Almost as if his heart had been replaced with a chunk of ice. “What did I say, Pans?”

Pansy keeps staring at him for several long seconds, she stares at him until his chest stops rising and falling, until nothing in him is moving at all. “It doesn’t matter.” She gets up. “Just don’t lose this. Try, for Merlin’s sake, _not_ to lose _him_.”

Draco shakes his head. “Why would that matter to you?”

“Oh no, dear, trust me, it doesn’t. Not even in the slightest way. To you though, it might.” Draco’s gaze follows her movements on her way to the chimney. “You know what’s hilarious though?”

“I…” What is she even talking about? What on Earth did he tell her, what could he possibly have said that night that would matter to him now? “No?”

“I confessed to you that night, knowing that there was nearly a hundred percent chance of you rejecting me. I guess, deep inside me, there was a tiny part who wanted to believe you wouldn’t.” She pauses, snorting. Draco doesn’t find it in him to laugh. Nothing out of what she’s telling him feels like it should be a laughing matter. “You did, though,” she goes on. “You even gave me a reason why. A good reason, too, I thought. I honestly felt I couldn’t compete with _that_.”

He basically broke her heart. He broke her heart, and he can’t remember it at all. Merlin, he must have been drunk off his arse. “I’m sorry, Pans. I’m so sorry…”

“I don’t want to hear your apologies now,” she hisses. “It was years ago and I’m over it.” And she might be, but Draco feels awful. She’s been letting him stay at her house, with that constantly hanging between them. He’s quite sure there was never an apology on his side—how could he even apologise for something he can’t even recall? “You know, now that I think of it, the funniest part of that night is that you can’t even remember it now, when it actually _matters_.”

“Remember what, Pans?” Draco tries, his world is crumbling around him, falling down in a turmoil he doesn’t know how to stop.

“The war did play some games with your mind, didn’t it? Either that, or all the booze you’ve been drinking since,” she says sharply. “You’re pregnant. Remember that curse on the Malfoy line?”

Quite suddenly, Draco’s minds shifts to Mother, back when he was seven. “Girls are a bit icky,” he’d said, while the swing seesawed forth, then back and forth. “Am I really supposed to like them?”

Mother had laughed, as if he’d said something amusing. He couldn’t see it back then. Today though, he certainly can. “In your case, I doubt it matters. Do you know what the Primogenitium spell does?”

Draco’s head snaps up. “I can’t be,” he whispers. His muscles tense up so fast he has to let go of the magazine he’s holding. He shoves his hands under his armpits, to hide the shaking in them because, “I can’t be, I’d have to be bonded for that to—”

In his mind, his tiny self shakes his head. Mother sits down on a bench nearby, in their rather large garden. “It’s not really a curse, or at least it didn’t start out as a curse,” Mother tells him. “It’s a spell placed on every Malfoy male heir. An old time spell, it comes with your surname…”

Pansy says, “Oh, but that’s the thing,” and she says that _here_ and _now_ , while Draco is trying to swim out of half-forgotten recollections. “You _are_ bonded. That’s what you told me that night. Now, I guess,” she adds, mockingly, “we both finally know to whom.”

“We have tried to take it back, several times,” Mother said back then. “No one even knows how to…”

“I suspected, of course,” he hears Pans’ saying in the background, behind all the noise, the constant buzz in his mind, behind Mother, behind everything. “Not that you ever told me. Once a Slytherin, always a Slytherin, isn’t it?”

“It can’t be. I can’t be,” he murmurs. “I don’t—I can’t even remember the bond…”

For a bizarre moment, this whole thing reminds him of the way his first time with Potter went. Fleeting, uncertain but certain, because he knew how all would go before it happened. He even remembers what he thought then, that there was something missing, and he didn’t know what exactly. Potter does matter to him, but sometimes he feels like perhaps he mattered before, too, and that he can’t remember how or why. It’s _right there_ , but out of reach. The fact that he’s thinking this now is even odder, because not something, but some _one_ must have been messing with his mind at some point, and he can’t say who. It’s a blank spot, but a blank spot that _must have happened_. But when? So he just averts his eyes, lets Pansy look at him until she’s figured out something here, because he can’t. He’s lacking info, too much info that he should have but doesn’t, and that itches the wrong way.

Who could have erased his mind so he—who would have, indeed?

“He’s always been your weak spot, hasn’t he?” Pansy says, gently. He feels her arms enclosing him. They pull him down a little, closer to her, cradling him in her arms. Cradling him while all he can do is fight to hold on to sobs, to hold on to tears that threaten and to happiness, at war with terror. For a moment there he recalls the last time he felt like this, when _Avada Kedavra_ was too big, and he was too small, and too much of a coward to stand by what he should have stood. “Who else could get such strong feelings out of you, strong enough to create a bond out of thin air.”

“It will give you one male child, no more,” he recalls Mother saying. “It will go into effect when you are past eighteen, if you ever bond to someone while still childless.” He sees it now, that him being fond of boys never really mattered. At least not to her, not to them. Certainly not to the succession line. He can’t help laughing, a bit on the hysterical side. As long as he finds someone he loves, that ridiculous spell will do all the work needed, regardless of how he feels about it. The dismal bit of all this is he has no clue how he feels about it. Partly glad, partly bitter. Definitely heartbroken. Merlin, what will Potter do when— _if_ he finds out?

Long after she leaves, Draco looks at his own image on the old mirror in his room. Places careful hands on his stomach, their light touch trailing over it until his fingers touch each other in the middle. It can’t be. But it is. When did he bond to Potter? _Why_ can’t he remember it?

Salazar, he really, really hopes Potter doesn’t know. He really hopes he hasn’t noticed yet.

*** * ***

It’s seven in the morning and Draco feels thwarted and ruined, like he’s been stumbling around without sleep for weeks, worrying over things that can’t be solved. It almost makes him laugh because… well, because he _has_. But how to solve this, when he can’t even tell Potter and hope for the best?

He pushes the blanket off with tired arms, without really knowing why: for some calm, for more air, for some reason that quite eludes him. It’s not like any of that matters, since at least the tears are in, not out, since at least Potter knows nothing, and it really should stay that way. Though he’ll find out eventually. Best case scenario, Potter will freak out, and then Draco can say farewell to this life, farewell to the giant pillock he’s fallen for. He can’t remember when nor how but, news flash, love lives in him, and it doesn’t look like it will be leaving anytime soon.

The sheets drop off him. Potter is still covered by them. At least he hasn’t woken up, and that’s good. The air smells of morning, clean and normal and _fine_ , and any second now Draco will be fine too. When he forgets about this, when he stops vainly hoping not to be sick on the floor. It took quite a while to clean up the loo last time, with his spells not working. He read somewhere it’s quite common during pregnancies. But there’s at least a tiny person growing inside him, and he thinks that’s good. Fantastic even, even though the Potter side of it is quite frightening.

It’s nice that Potter’s taken to sleeping here more and more often. It’s not like Draco knows what happened with his wife. He doesn’t want to ask either, he figures he’ll just make use of these moments he has with him because, sooner or later, Potter’s going to realise there’s something off with him and… and Draco doesn’t know what will happen then, but he figures it won’t be good. Rather like his luck: unreal and nonexistent.

“Earth to Draco,” Potter says, quite loudly, sitting on the nearest stool.

“Oh. Morning,” says Draco, just pulled out of the mess that his mind is these days. He leaves his cup of tea on the kitchen desk. “I trust you slept well?”

Potter nods. “You looked lost in your thoughts for a moment there.”

Draco beams a nervous smile. “Well, I’m here now not there, so…” So why not make use of this time? He wants to remember this. He doesn’t want it taken from him by yet another Obliviation.

He walks over to stand in front of Potter. Potter, who stares up at him, in confusion.

He takes a second to memorise the soft curve of Potter’s face. The way his bottom lip, full and chewed on—boy, he really loves that look on him, the one he gets whenever he ponders over something, anything—seems absolutely perfect. The way his eyelashes shadow his cheeks whenever he blinks. His eyes, green as spring grass, green as Slytherin, as new leaves on a maple tree, search Draco’s, as if he knew there are questions he’s not uttering.

Morosely, a thought goes through his mind: that he’s not going to be here forever. Draco doesn’t want to lose this, these brief moments that mean everything. _I’m apparently in love with you_ , he thinks, _and you, you don't even know that, do you?_ It almost makes him want to laugh. And yet here he stands, bonded to Potter, and Potter can’t even see that: that Draco wouldn’t leave even if it were possible, that he’s trapped here and doesn’t want out because Potter means too much, and he has too little to hold on to…

He’s not even sure he wants Harry to know that. Ever. He’d give his world for it to be mutual, for Potter to feel the way he feels about him, but he can’t say that. Not with the future of his child up in the air and swinging, so he puts his hands on Potter’s shoulders, and kisses him.

The first touch of their mouths is soft, almost more of a brush than a kiss. But then Draco, who’s nothing if not determined when it comes to kissing Potter, leans forward, pressing his lips harder against Potter’s as he tilts his head slightly to one side.

Potter groans. His lips move sleekly against Draco’s, his mouth parting a bit. Draco follows suit—he wants to feel the wet smoothness of Harry’s tongue touching his—parting his own lips to allow him access. Potter’s hands, previously plastered to the table, rest now on Draco’s hips, a light touch that grows more and more firm as the kiss goes on. Draco’s hands travel up from Potter’s shoulders, into his hair. He’s quite pleased with Potter’s response, moaning his approval into his mouth.

Draco draws back, hands still tangled in Potter’s soft—and of course utterly messy—hair. He looks into his eyes. “Do you sometimes feel like all this happened before,” he asks Potter, wondering, “at some point?” Potter’s lips are red and swollen and he wants nothing more than to kiss them again, but he needs to know. He needs to know if perhaps he’s not the only one to feel this, to feel like a large part of him has been torn out and left missing. “Like we’ve been together on a different life and now it’s all, I don’t know… forgotten, somehow.”

“Quite often,” Potter says. His breath comes in shallow gasps. He looks thoroughly unhinged, his hands still resting on Draco’s hips, his thumbs unconsciously rubbing small circles into his sides.

Draco wonders if he should ask now: _Do you feel like someone’s been toying with your memories?_ But Potter’s answer was vague enough to mean something else—quite often I think so, quite often I hope so—and saying that would mean admitting too much, too soon. Instead, Draco says, “Let’s go upstairs.”

“What, again?”

“Yes, come on.” His voice makes Potter shudder, either from the warmth on his neck or perhaps from Draco’s words—he knows what they mean, how could he not? It’s not like Draco knows which one it is, but regardless he’s quite pleased. He can’t help himself. “‘It’s cold out there, but it’s warm in bed’,” he croons, quoting a song Potter should know. Somehow, it doesn’t look like he gets it. “I need you. Don’t make me fuck myself.”

“I don’t think I’d be against that.” There’s quite a bit of amusement in his voice. “Please, go ahead. I’d rather like to watch—”

“Voyeur,” Draco says, while Potter pulls him close. Hands sliding up Draco’s back, trapping him in an embrace he doesn’t want out of. “That’s what you are.”

“For you?” He palms Draco’s cheek, guiding his face to capture his lips again with his own. “Yeah, absolutely. Growing and spreading, I tell you.”

“My, my. You might be turning French.”

“You think? ‘Cause I think that’d mean dressing better…”

Draco crumples his nose and concludes, “Yes, well. I don’t think you are there yet.” Maybe at some point Potter will go along with his suggestions and start looking like a normal person. “We might get you there at some point.”

Their kiss turn sloppy, fiery and stormy. Potter slides a hand up Draco’s t-shirt, meeting flesh with his palm, gliding his nails across Draco’s rib cage in a way that feels somewhere between marvellous and heart-stopping.

Draco shivers, tugging him closer, sucking on his lower lip. “Upstairs,” he says.

“No, here. Let’s just…”

“What, here?”

“Yeah, against the wall. It’ll be good. It’ll be great, I swear…”

Draco gasps. Potter’s hips roll forward, seeking friction.

“Okay. Okay, let’s.” Draco lets himself be pushed back, both their bodies molding into each other, as they always do. He can feel Potter’s already hard between his legs. He himself is quite hard too, and he’s quite aware Potter knows it. “Fuck me,” he says.

“What, already?”

“Yes.” Draco steps back, panting for air. “Yes, please. Fuck me here, fuck me against the wall, fuck me hard…”

Potter grabs Draco’s arm, shoving him up against the wall.

“Oh God…” he says, his lips pressing into Draco’s throat. “Please, please keep talking…”

Draco can’t hold back a smirk. “What, it gets you hot?”

“Yes, definitely. Please, please just keep talking…”

“I want to feel your prick so deep inside me—oh, Merlin.” _So deep inside me that my heart beats for you, that love is not a strong enough word to depict what I feel._ That it corrupts his soul, leaves it shy and scant, because emptiness will be the death of him when all this is gone, forever.

Draco is stepping on his own t-shirt, fumbling with the waist of Potter’s pyjama trousers that won’t come _off_ , for some absurd reason.

“Oh, sweet Merlin…” Draco shudders, grips Potter’s forearms. Bites his lip again. Potter really looks quite focussed down there, but focussed in a good way, in a way that’s making Draco shiver all over when Harry licks one of his nipples. “Do that again.”

“This?” Potter says. Draco nods, madly. He didn’t even _know_ he liked that, but he seriously does now. He wonders for a moment if him being pregnant has anything to do with this. It doesn’t last long though, as he sucks in a breath when Harry moves lower and puts his mouth on his belly. Right where it gets soft and vulnerable.

Draco glances down, nerves cracking with unease.

Where the baby is. Potter’s head lies where the baby is.

Potter looks up. Says, “Turn around.”

“Why?”

“Why? I don’t know why,” Potter says, amused. “Because I want you to?”

See, normally Draco would have doubted it, but he really does trust Potter. A lot. “All right.” In fact, probably too much. Probably more than he should.

Draco lies against the wall as Potter kisses his way down his back, finally settling onto his arse. “What are you…” Potter’s hands pull apart his buttocks. “Salazar. You’re not going to…” He’s soon proved wrong by Potter’s tongue, as it gives a long lick along the crevice down there. “Merlin… you are. That feels…”

“Good?”

Good? Not good, amazing. “Merlin, please…” _Please don’t stop_. _Don’t ever stop_.

It goes on and on, until Draco can do nothing but push back against his tongue, because it feels wonderful, and he’s so gone, thoughts are not. All he hears is himself whimpering, needy and wanting, his mind a gale of bliss and wish and _now, please, now_. His entire world, reduced to bucking helplessly against Potter’s face, and it’s rushed, and sloppy, but he’s so, so close…

Orgasm is one breath away.

At least until Potter grabs his cock, and doesn’t let him get there. They fuck, afterwards, and then they go upstairs and do it again.

Draco thinks they have all day, and this is amazing, and why not? It must be the moment’s fault, or perhaps that Draco is literally crazy about him, or perhaps the fact that he’s done in when pleasure is all, and there’s no better, because he hears himself saying, “I’m pregnant.”

Harry lies beside him, unmoving.

Merlin. What has he done. Draco thinks about meat wagons, Miller and _you’re useless, even more useless than your father_ , because he can’t believe he’s said that when he really shouldn’t have. He listens to the cars outside, the slug ringing of the tin bell Kreacher has downstairs, Potter’s slow breathing. It seems ages go by, and Potter does nothing.

He’s so done. Potter will kick him out, won’t he? He’ll have to go back to his life before and that won’t be good, it wouldn’t have been good before, but now he has a tiny tiny human growing inside him and he’s not supposed to take Polyjuice, at least that’s what mediwizards said. And what if… what if Miller number two is waiting around the corner?

He can’t risk that. He can’t put his child through that, he just can’t. But he has, and why? All out of love not given back and being way dafter than a cow. And now it’s just waiting until Potter says something. Pack your bags, grab your things, or perhaps this is all mine, you can go elsewhere.

“Can you even get pregnant? Is that even possible?” Potter asks, lets a nervous laugh out, and Draco… Draco feels like laughing too because at least now he knows he’s not the only one at sixes and sevens here. Potter sounds as well. “I honestly thought only women could—”

“It’s ancient magic,” Draco breaks in. It’s like a gate has opened and now he can’t shut up. Words jump out of his mouth. He tells Harry everything, all he knows, what Mother told him, what he found out afterwards.

The only bit he keeps quiet is the bond. He’s not sure he wants Harry to know that. It seems pretty obvious that he doesn’t.

All things considered, it might be for the best.

Afterwards, Potter gets dressed. He’s quiet, so quiet all through it. Draco watches his chest, sees the slow tense breath in. Then, he watches Potter’s face, that mouth, frowning. It really doesn’t look good. It doesn’t look good at all.

All of a sudden, he feels so alone, extremely alone, panic raising within him because he’d expected shouting or something like that but not this, he’d expected movement, not this stillness that has a bad feeling to it. Smells of resentment and bitterness, and there’s something doubtful in Potter’s gaze which Draco doesn’t quite like, not much.

But in the end all Potter says is, “Wait here.”

And Draco does. He waits one hour, two. Potter is gone. He’s not even sure he’ll come back. He doesn’t know if he’s… _what_ Potter will do, when he comes back. Draco hopes, wishes he won’t suggest an abortion. He thinks of poisoning, crushing, burning the little human growing in his belly and he really, really doesn’t want that. Not at all. Not for his son. He wants his tiny human born and growing, forever a reminder of these few months he felt content and relaxed, these few months when his life seemed for once worth living. No, if Potter even _dares_ to suggest it, Draco is so out of here.

Even though he has no clue what’s he’s going to do afterwards. Go back to Pansy’s, he reckons.

But Potter never comes back. Not that day.

Draco’s too tired to have dinner—though he does, if only for the baby. He feels so sad, so empty, days grow longer and longer, and not even Walburga’s preaching or Kreacher’s constant bowing manage to pull him out of the emptiness growing in him.

(The Dark Lord was right. He _is_ useless. Useless and worthless.)

He can’t find it in him to do anything, not even watching videos on YouTube, especially when he can’t even sleep at night while _worthless_ repeats endlessly in his mind. Anxiety grows stronger, so strong that reaching the other side of it, where things were dandy and fine seems almost an unattainable achievement.

Potter comes back a few days later. “I’ve told my wife,” he says, tiredly.

Draco’s heart thumps in his chest. He tries not to trust it too much; this could be heaven, this could also be hell. “And?”

“And… nothing.” A shrug. “We haven’t really been _together_ together for a while, if you know what I mean. She suggested getting a divorce months ago, I was just… look, I don’t know. Letting it wait, I reckon.” He seems wary and uncomfortable, but at least he’s here, and he’s talking to Draco, and there’s no raised voices, no threats. No spells have been thrown yet—Draco is quite glad, with the way his magic is working (or rather _not_ working) he’s not too sure he’d be able to defend himself. For a moment there, Draco thinks things might be turning towards good. Perhaps. It seems likely. “I guess this whole thing has given me the push to sign the arrangement.”

Draco bites his lip and nods. “So, the baby…”

“What about it?” Potter asks, looking honestly shocked.

“I thought you might want me to…” Draco wonders if— _how_ to ask that, when his own answer is _no, never, never ever will I_ , possibly a hand included palm inwards, sticking two fingers up at Potter. “I’m not getting rid of it.”

Potter looks surprised, uncertain. “I don’t see how that would be my choice. I’m not the one who’s pregnant here.” Draco feels stupid and clueless because _of course_ that’s not Potter’s choice. Potter has principles and all that. All he wants is Draco’s opinion and he’ll take it over anything else. “Do you want to have it?”

“Yes.” Yes. Yes, above everything. He wants his tiny, tiny human seeing the light of day. No one can do anything to stop that.

“Well, then I guess we’re having a baby.”

Draco’s mouth curls into a slight grin. “We”—and that ‘we’ there feels like they’ve established something, like they’re a couple now, like Harry _knows_ that and is actually glad it’s happened. Draco is rather glad too. Exhausted but glad, because love still lives in him and this moment here is the closest to perfect any time in his life has ever been—“are having a baby.”

And when Harry kisses him, not strong but deep, Draco makes a soft humming sound. His whole world suddenly feels better, determined, resolute… all those things he’s never managed to reach himself before.

He thinks, perhaps, they might be growing in him now.

*** * ***

The next two months pass in a flash.

Draco’s tummy looks quite a bit bigger now. He thinks by now others can _tell_ , he’s not sure how he feels about that. A pregnant Malfoy, indeed: laugh or shame or both at once.

Weasel seems to be quite pissed at Potter. Draco has to admit he found it rather entertaining at first, he’d expected himself to be the main aim of Weasel’s comments. Instead, most of Weasel’s jibes tend to be directed at his own best friend, and that’s all right at first: Weasel’s world is one where Draco is not. It would have bothered him any other time, he’s never been a great fan of ignorance towards himself. Now, however, it suits him just fine. It’s not like he’s particularly willing to waste a minute, even a mere second, in chatting up to a carnivorous mammal with brownish fur and tiny legs, especially not when that mammal is Potter’s friend, the one who once laughed at him and then kept calling him ‘Ferret’ all through Hogwarts.

Only, Weasel’s comments range all the way from _bloody liar_ to _adulterous shirt-lifter twat_ , and Draco, despite his unwillingness to defend Potter—Harry can do that himself, thanks; besides, it doesn’t look like he needs any outside help, he seems to be doing peachy at pretending all this crap is not happening—does have a bit of an issue with that last one.

“A bit on the prejudiced side of the fence, isn’t he?” Draco tells Harry one day. Mostly because he’s heard those two last terms used before, usually on him, and he can’t say they came from someone who approved of queerness per se. Or of him. Or of what his job used to be.

Harry, on the other hand, simply chuckles. “I highly doubt it,” he says. “That’s just Ron being Ron. Plus, he thinks you are.”

“That I am what,” Draco asks, rather suspicious, “exactly?”

“A prejudiced prat.”

“What?” Draco blurts, arms crossed in front of him. “I am not!”

“I know you’re not, you pillock,” says Harry, massive eye-roll included, all while Draco dodges the popcorn thrown at him. “I wouldn’t be dating you if you were anything like you were back at school.”

“I wasn’t _that_ prejudiced, even back then.”

“No? You certainly looked like you were.”

“Well, I wasn’t,” Draco snaps. Looking down, Draco places his hands over his growing belly. _I wasn’t_ , he thinks, or else the bonding bit would be history never happened. It would have been a bad dream, another nightmare, like those he often runs from.

“Whatever. Look, just leave him be, okay? He’ll get over it soon enough.”

Potter might be right, Potter might be wrong. Still, Weasel’s words itch Draco’s skin the wrong way to the point where he ends up yelling at him. There are some punches exchanged. Nothing too awful, to be honest; Weasel is being rather careful. Draco reckons it’s likely because Harry’s told him, because he knows Harry’s child is inside him. He also knows Weasel well enough to be perfectly aware that this here, this is what they’ve both been wanting. Not that he doesn’t appreciate it: Draco is quite grateful all his punches seemed aimed straight at nowhere, thank you very much, it just feels good to be doing something about it, finally. Something that won’t put his child in danger. He feels like he’s living on cotton these days, given the way Potter treats him.

It all goes well with their fake-slaps, at least until Potter steps between them, the strength of his magic forcing them both into a sort of midair paralysis. Weasel leaves afterwards, not before spitting blood at Draco’s feet—Draco guesses one of his hits did land, and isn’t that wonderful? And Potter…

Potter shakes his head. “Why would you do that?”

He seems rather angry. Only, at him, not at Weasel. How is that anywhere near fair?

That night Potter fucks him hard against the headboard, his teeth digging into Draco’s shoulder until pleasure melds into pain. Draco bites his lip and says nothing, but he curls up under the sheets when Potter’s done. When midnight comes, he’s up again, watching the pink marks on his shoulder in the bathroom’s mirror, keeping _useless useless_ quiet and definitely not thinking about _worthless_. All while Potter sleeps next door.

“I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry,” Potter tells him, when he finally goes back to bed.

Draco has (badly, since his magic seems to be perpetually turned off these days) healed the tiny cuts Potter’s teeth left on his skin. But he still remembers what got them there. He remembers, and he’s not likely to ever forget. “It’s fine,” he says, even as his thoughts revolve around _You better be_.

Harry’s arm curls around Draco’s waist. “No, it’s not fine. It’s not fine at all. I care about you. You know that, don’t you?”

It’s what Draco has been hoping to hear for quite a while. It only hurts that it comes now, after his tiny fight with Weasel, after Harry fucked him like the whore he is— _was_ , and left him scarred and broken without even so much as an apology.

Honestly, that’s what hurts the most. That the apology comes _now_ , and not before.

“I know,” he whispers. But he resents it’s not _I love you_. That’s what he would have said in Potter’s place. _I love you_ and not _I care about you_ , like he’s a child who can’t sit still, who keeps asking for meat instead of vegetables, who can’t even look after himself. Like he’s a child, which he’s _not_. He thinks he’s lived through enough not to be treated like that anymore.

In the end Potter turns out to be right—yet again, about Weasel. When the second week drops by, he’s behaving more like a person and less like a rabid dog. Or a rabid weasel, in this particular case. Mostly. With the occasional exception of his, “Merlin saggy balls, Harry, you had literally the whole world to choose from, the _whole_ bloody _world,_ mate. And you came back with—” insert accusatory finger pointing at Draco, “—that thing standing over there,” moments.

(On the bright side, he’s now ‘that thing’ and not ‘the Ferret’.) 

Draco, however, still hasn’t forgotten Potter’s anger that night, as he hasn’t forgotten the motive behind it. He’s now turned to option two: if you can’t make them yours, make them at least join you. Pansy once said, _Oh, dear, do keep friends close, but always make sure to keep enemies closer. They’re the ones who truly mean harm_. It’s as good a time as any to test her theories; she’s always been best out of them two, regarding what people want. In several strenuous efforts, Draco grits his teeth, swallows his jibes, and offers Weasel a cup of tea. Or a sandwich. Or anything else edible that’s at least somewhat close to him, day after day after day. By now he thinks he rather knows Weasel, and what he’s learnt is he likes food.

Amazingly, after a few, “Oh, you posh little bastard,” Weasel actually takes them, all along with an odd look, and never ever saying thank you. Or even apologising for having been such a wanker.

Then again, Draco had also been expecting Weaselette to be mad at him, and yet she doesn’t seem to be. “It was never meant to work,” she tells him when she drops by to leave some of Harry’s clothes. Harry, it seems, left absolutely everything behind. “He wanted a family. If I’m honest, I think I’ve had enough of that to last me several lifetimes.”

Draco stays quiet, a fake smile plastered on his face. He’s been trying hard to believe his pregnancy is not the whole reason why Harry hasn’t left him yet. Her words though, they seem to imply he might have been quite close to the truth.

“Besides, right now I’d rather focus on my career.”

Draco nods, of course. He’s kind, if nothing else. He tries a, “You are quite a good seeker,” which mysteriously doesn’t get him cursed.

“Aren’t I?” she says, smiling. “You weren’t so bad yourself, I have to admit, though I always stood behind Harry…”

He shrugs. “We were just kids.” Four years ago, and it seems ages. They were just kids, playing a game too big for them—with too many enemies and too many deaths involved, all things considered. It’s a shame none of them managed to see it then. “You’re now doing it for a living though.” He’s certainly seeing it now, that perhaps Weasel’s sis is not a crone from hell. He can’t help resenting her a bit—Potter was hers after all, at least by the time he came in and took him.

“Such a shame Harry didn’t go into Quidditch,” she jokes. “He’d be making millions right now.”

“Somehow, I doubt he needs them.” He already _has_ millions, mostly from all the press coverage.

Before she leaves though, she says, “Oh, by the way. Tell your boyfriend Lily is mine,” which kind of suggests she and Harry are not talking to each other. “I’m keeping her,” she adds, and it seems determined.

“Sure,” Draco answers, having no clue who this Lily person is. It seems Ginevra thinks he knows though, best to let her think he does. “I’ll let him know.”

Later that day, he finds out who Lily is. He also happens to find out that Harry can say goodbye to his Crup, named after his mother, for it’s never coming back.

*** * ***

One night, Granger and Weasel drop by for dinner. Draco spends half the evening trying to talk to her, mostly because she seems easier to deal with than Weasel. Besides Potter wouldn’t be, say, extremely pleased, if he decided to leave the room. Or punch Weasel’s nose, like that evening.

Furthermore, she’s the only one who’s always surpassed him back at Hogwarts, at least when it came to grades in subjects. He’s guessing there might be a slight bit of admiration within his rancour: he’s feeling quite resentfully respectful here and that, well, that is really saying something.

She follows him to the kitchen when he helps Kreacher clear the table—which admittedly Draco only does whenever Harry is around. If he’s off at work, Kreacher can do it by himself, thanks.

Hermione is mumbling something under her breath, something that makes Draco pause and ask, “What did you just say?”

“Oh! Don’t worry, I was just talking to myself,” she says, smiling a smile much much faker than the one stuck to Draco’s face all through dinner. “Say, clean plates, where should I place them?”

“Over there,” he says, eyes narrowed, and that’s that. It throws him off a bit. He could have sworn her words were _I should have known you’d find your way back, somehow_.

“I lied to you, that day, when you healed me,” he tells Harry that night, way after Granger and Weasel have left. “It’s not exactly true that I have no one. I’ve always had Pansy.”

Harry turns on his side, his head resting on his hand. “I know. It didn’t take me too long to figure that out. My couch, down there, it never did smell of azaleas before you got here. Put two and two together and—”

“Oh.” Yes, well, there’s that. That, and that none of his toiletries smell quite as feminine as Pansy’s, and largely that he should have seen that coming. “Are you…” _Are you angry?_ Draco licks his lips. “Does it bother you?”

“No, not really. Not now,” Potter says. “I’m just glad you told me.”

Sometimes it seems it’s all forgiven now, except for the ginormous lie that started all this.

Draco keeps hoping he’d chosen a different path to get here, wondering how to undo what has been done. It’s rather pointless, because so far his best conclusion is that some things are better done than undone, and that even _that_ can rarely be changed, not unless you have a Time-Turner.

(According to Potter though, they are done and gone, ever since his little adventure at the Ministry.)

Besides, undoing that might land him back at Pansy’s, and surely without Harry by his side.

He’s not too sure he wants to go back there.

*** * ***

Draco sits on the couch, reading _net_ again, only looking up when he hears Harry’s footsteps coming closer. He pauses for a moment there, admiring the way his hips look beneath those awful torn jeans he keeps wearing. He could always set them aflame, he thinks, one eyebrow lifted. One little _Incendio_ , a tiny deal with Kreacher just so he takes the blame… why not, after all? Harry would look much better without them, and he caught Kreacher some days ago, glance full of want at one of Draco’s scarves while he was cleaning his—no, _their_ bedroom.

Kreacher would probably never wear it, given what it means. But that doesn’t mean Draco could not try, does it? Not wearing something is not exactly the opposite of wanting to own it, and Kreacher clearly fits there…

“You,” Harry whispers in his ear, reaching around him, gentle hands closing the paper to hold him close, “are clearly thinking about something, aren’t you? You’ve got that face, the one you wear when you ponder things like a mad hatter.”

A warm hug on a sunny morning, Draco would give his world for both to last.

“I think the _Prophet_ seems to be holding a grudge against me. I mean look at this,” he says, pointing towards the paper’s cover. _Is Our Hero Under a Spell?_ “They think you are under a love potion. Furthermore, they think _I_ have dosed you with one, which is so far beyond credible—”

“Bollocks. Let them hold grudges,” Harry whispers, his arms tightening around him. A shudder of want shivers down Draco’s spine. “It’s not like I care,” Potter adds. “You—” he turns Draco’s head towards him, a hand under his chin “—shouldn’t care either. We’re together in this, that’s all that matters, alright?”

“Absolutely.” Draco grins, as he bends his head slightly to kiss Harry, sucking at the tongue that invades him. It feels like a promise, a promise of lust and clumsy tumbles under sheets when sun goes down. “Granger said there’s a gala next week. She said you’re going—”

“Oh man, seriously? To hell with her. I told her I’d tell you.”

“Did you now?” Draco asks. What else could he say? Shocking is really rather shocking. “How come?”

“Well,” Harry whispers against his cheek, and then, in his terrible, terrible, _awful_ singing voice, “‘’cause I’m not plannin’ on going solo’.”

“Merlin. You knew, didn’t you? The Wham song,” Draco says, covering his cheeks as heat flushes his face. “Yes, of course you knew. Bloody liar, you… you…”

A lazy smile draws up the corner of Potter’s mouth. “‘You put the boom-boom into my heart’. What can I say, it’s a bit hard not to hear you when you sing to yourself night and day.”

“Alas, all my time spent trying to fool you. You hear that? Time, spent. You could have _said_ something.”

Harry grins, likely in response to the blatant shock on Draco’s face. “Indeed, I could have. Like, I’m quite shocked you’re not dancing the jitterbug all over the kitchen.”

“Wait, does this mean, I mean, what you said before… Are you taking me as—” Draco swallows “—your date? To the gala?”

Harry nods, solemnly. “Maybe. If you’d like to.” It’s obvious this tiny step means a lot to him. Draco can see in Harry’s face, how hard he’s trying not to let it show. He is quite content to go with that. It obviously means quite a bit to him, too, perhaps even more than it means to Harry.

“People would know about us.”

“I know. It’ll be okay. I mean, if you want to. Otherwise we can… not do it?”

“No, I’d love to,” Draco says, though he’s not willing to admit how much. He’s not willing to admit he’s bonded. Just as he’s not willing to admit this is everything to him.

“Who knows, I might even take you dancing when we come back!”

Draco grins as well, shaking his head. “You must be joking. You don’t even _like_ dancing.”

“Not at all.” A wink. “But I’d do it for you.”

“Would you, now…” A brief kiss. “And now you’re thinking about something, aren’t you?” Draco says, basically repeating Harry’s question back at him. “What’s on your mind?”

Sometimes he’s afraid that Potter will rethink what they are doing here, starting a family. He’s quite scared he might send him home, carry on with his life alone. It’s pointless, it’s stupid, but Draco’s thoughts often trail over that corner. He can’t help it. He’s hoping not, mostly because he feels complete now, as he’s longed to be for years, and he’s not giving this up again. Not unless he has to.

Merlin, it would kill him.

“I think I may love you.” Harry pushes the hair out of Draco’s eyes.

 _I’m quite sure I do_ , Draco thinks, looking up at him, admiring the green in Potter’s eyes. _You might not love me long though_ , his mind whispers, _you might just love me until you figure out why I’m here, when I faked the truth_ … Draco shuts it up, shuts it down. He doesn’t yet know how right it is. “Let them dance,” he says, “we’re coming home afterwards.”

“After the gala?”

“Yes.”

“How come?”

“Because,” Draco says. _Because I have a present for you, alone._ Because he wants to. Because he wants Harry to want it too. Because he wants Harry to want to spend more time with him.

“Fine enough,” Harry says.

Draco nods, answering with a final, “Good.”

* * *

 

Draco stands—quite proudly, he has to say—in the middle of the Ministry’s ballroom.

He’s been introduced as Harry’s date. Few things, he thinks, can even compare to that. He’s now the freaking hero’s boyfriend; swallow _that_ , Skeeter! He’s spent most of the evening following Harry around, saying hello to this and that person. Generally acting as his shield, at least whenever reporters come anywhere near them. He’s certainly missed this. Half his childhood was spent in parties like this one, along with his parents, chumming with the big boys at the Ministry. It’s been gone from his life for too long now. He thinks he’s doing quite well so far, so well in fact that Weasley is almost being civil to him. Quite a joke, if you ask Draco… 

Weasel is really not as bad as he used to think he was. He still much prefers Granger: her topics, at least, are barely interesting, so long as she’s not ranting over house-elf freedom. They all seem to be getting along fine, talk about surprises! It’s quite a pity Pans is not here. She would have loved it, given her blessed joy at these—

“My, my. Up the duff, are you?”

Draco can’t help paling upon hearing that comment. Not because of the words per se, but _the voice_ saying them…

He turns around, knowing, just knowing, because that voice is still etched into his memory as if he’d heard it yesterday, even though it’s been six flipping months since the last time he did. If he’s quite honest here, he’s not looking forwards to hearing it ever again. He’s quite aware why he kept Flooing: just another way to show he could, holding his power over Draco’s head.

The whole world seems to have slowed magnificently, to the point where Draco is stepping on his own toes out of pure clumsiness.

“I see your standards have quite risen since the last time I saw you,” Blaise says, looking around at his partners. Draco doesn’t know what Zabini wants, why he’s even talking to him. Unless…

Watching Zabini sidelong, Draco’s brows furrow into a frown. He’s the only one who _knows_ , aside from Pansy. He never took the potion before seeing him…

Merlin. Indeed, they all seemed to be getting along fine. At least until Blaise showed up.

Harry glances between them, looking for all the world as if he’s missed something relevant here. Draco thinks perhaps he has, being a Gryffindor and all. “What does he mean?”

“Nothing. He means nothing at all. Evening, Blaise,” Draco greets, and thank Merlin, Morgana and Salazar that at least he’s good at faking smiles, “we were just leaving.” Mostly because he has this awful feeling inside him, that Blaise is going to do something here that he might not like. It just keeps being there, not going away, and it’s driving him mad. “Come on, Harry.”

“He doesn’t know?” Blaise asks, looking quite fixedly at Potter. Then, he turns to Draco, mischief glinting in his eyes. “You haven’t even told him, have you?”

“Don’t, please don’t—”

“Did you know, Potter, that your lovely boyfriend here used to be an escort?”

“What?” Harry asks, just as Draco says, “Nothing. He’s kidding, that’s all. He’s just kidding. Aren’t you, Blaise?”

“Oh, I’m certainly not kidding. You see, your boyfriend used to be a whore. For pay, too, and rather cheap. He stayed with me quite a few nights, didn’t you, Draco, dear?”

“Is that true?” Harry asks Draco. “Is any of what he’s saying even remotely true?”

“I…” Draco bites his lip. His world is sinking. He can feel it. “It may be, slightly? I mean, some parts of it”—and the words want out, dear Merlin. Draco, shut up. Shut up or lie, do _something_ here but not this, do not tell him the—“might be”—truth, for Salazar’s sake. Just shut the hell up—“true.”

Fuck.

“Really? And which parts exactly do you mean? Maybe the part in which he’s obviously shagged you, repeatedly, or rather the part in which you actually _charged_ for it?” Harry demands, rancour humming on his tone.

“Well, I wasn’t exactly cheap…” And there he goes again, making this all better. Go on, Draco. Why can’t he stay quiet when it matters? “… as he put it,” the last bit comes in a mumble, barely even audible to himself.

Zabini is smirking at him, the prat, like he’s the king of kings, like ruining Draco’s life is all he ever lived for. And perhaps it is.

Potter stares at Draco, as if he’s something new, something he wasn’t expecting, something he doesn’t even want to touch. As if he’s icky. As if he’s _sorry_ he ever dared touch him. _Useless_ , Draco’s mind says. _Even more useless than your father_ , and he wants to cry, he wants to die. He doesn’t want Potter to look at him like that: like he’s hateful, pitiable, pathetic.

Disgusting.

 _Useless_.

Like a filthy rat who just crawled out of a sewer, only deserving to be spit on. Stepped on. Not worthy of even a try.

Potter turns around, strolling towards the chimney. It feels like a punch, like a punch to the gut.

By the time Draco reacts, he follows him, running as fast as he can. “I’m sorry,” he says, apologises, _begs_. “I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean to,” but he did. “You just assumed,” and Draco fed it gladly. “I’m sorry,” and he truly is. “Harry, please wait.” _Please, let me explain. Please, don’t leave me. Please, not now._

He watches Potter vanish into the Floo.

He turns around. Several reporters are approaching him, Skeeter amongst them.

_Useless._

He tries to Floo to Grimmauld himself. Only, the Floo is not taking him anywhere. It doesn’t _let_ him. Merlin, has he been blocked out?

Zabini, the absolute prick, looks rather pleased with himself.

_Useless._

Granger has a distraught look on her face—she looks like she _pities_ him. He doesn’t want her pity, not now, not ever.

Draco’s eyes itch. He has a dire feeling about all this. It’s not going to end well. It’s never going to end well.

_Useless._

Weasel turns to him with a grim expression, his fists tight by his sides.

Merlin, he’s so screwed. And there’s no one here to save him now.

*** * ***

“Useless. Even more useless than your father,” the Dark Lord said. “Perhaps I’ll let Fenrir have a little fun with you. Wouldn’t you like that, Fenrir?”

Draco swallowed. Not Fenrir, please. He knows what he does to children. Draco might have been sixteen, but… but in that moment, he wasn’t feeling so grown up anymore.

Fenrir’s eyes shone with evil darkness. “Can I…”

His hand tightened around his neck. Draco’s hands clenched around his fingers before breath ran out of him. His heart was thumping in his ears, panic rose with every heartbeat.

“No. Leave him alive,” the Dark Lord said. “He’s good leverage.”

Fenrir looked at him, a vicious smile twisting his lips. “You heard that, little one? We’re gonna have a bit of fun here…”

_Run, boy, run. Run faster till fear’s off and gone. Run, boy, run, they’re trying to chase you down._

Draco wakes up all of a sudden, a taut shudder running through him. Pansy is caressing his hair. “You’re fine,” she keeps saying, “you’re fine. It’s all fine.”

“What happened?” _Where am I?_

“You came here, I don’t know what—you were…”

 _Broken_.

“But you’re fine. You’re here, you’re alive.”

He’s alive. Alive and pregnant and alone. This time, Draco can’t hold back the sobs. Not anymore. They choke him, shake him, raking through his body as the perpetual threat he’s been living for months fades into nothing: the great lie that started it, finally exposed.

(The Dark Lord was right, evil does trump goodness. The Dark Lord was right, he always was: Draco is useless. Useless, worthless and a waste of space. Just as he said when Draco failed, just as he said when Draco ran and ran and couldn’t escape.)


	4. Chapter 4

One year later, Draco is working at Morden Superstore, a small coffee shop in Muggle London, way after he’s finally managed to get his freaking passport.

“Did it work this time?” Pansy asked when he got home that day. “Did they give you your password?”

Having made it to the Ministry and back, still in one piece in spite of all the insults thrown his way, Draco leaned back against the door for some reassurance, for some calm. Closing his eyes, he took a few deep breaths, the way Mother always told him to when he was stressed. “It’s really not a password Pans.” One, two… come on, relax already, boy. It’s not like any of them can get you here. “It doesn’t even _work_ like a password.”

“I don’t see why not.” Pansy frowned, looking quite stern. “It opens the portal to the Muggle world, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes, Pans. But that gate is no door, it’s just a figurative door.”

All of a sudden, Pansy grasped the passport from his hand.

“Wait.” Draco watched her as she looked through the pages. “There’s people in the background here…” She shook the passport, midair; then, she stared at him, her face a puzzle of confusion. “I don’t get it. How come they won’t move?”

Draco’s still not sure if it was the nerves or his day or what, but that silly comment had him bursting into laughter.

It’s hard work, what they have him doing at the bar. That much is true. So hard indeed Draco’s taken to being really, really grateful for having magic on his side when he goes home. Especially when washing yet another glass might make his fingers drastically fall off, with how jaded they feel all day long. But at least he gets paid, even if not quite as much as before. And anyway—Draco shudders in revulsion—he likes what he’s doing now much, much better than lying back down and spreading his legs for others. This is nowhere near as shameful as that was.

He reckons Father might have disagreed with him there, likely thinking both jobs rate equally in the distasteful scale. Given Father’s ideals though, Draco is prone to believing he got stuck living in a different century—likely the nineteenth, with Queen Victoria ruling over Britain; prosperity and domestic prudery, girls in long skirts and complacency being all Lucius valued most. Yet, Father is Father and not him. By now, Draco can send Father’s thoughts to hell and wish them to stay there forever. If it weren’t for him, Mother would still be alive, and he wouldn’t have the Mark etched into his skin.

Besides, Muggles are actually _nice_ to him, and that’s something he hasn’t found anywhere else. Even his coworkers are rather pleasant, none of them too bothered by his ‘failed relationship’ which, mystery of mysteries, left him with a child.

(A child Naomi seems to have a rather large sweet spot for. She keeps offering to stroll him around the park at noon, when she takes her midday break.)

Admittedly, with all concerning his brief toss and turn with Potter, Draco thinks Muggles are better off not knowing what they don’t already know. Like the fact that he’s the one who got pregnant, and wasn’t exactly dating a girl at the time. He seems to have given them the wrong impression though, since ironically he keeps having blokes proposing to him night and day. It’s not that _that_ makes him angry or anything; it’s nice, it feels great to be valued for something, though he’d much prefer if it were for anything else, and not his looks. He mostly thinks it would have been nicer if it had happened sooner—before the whole prostitute bit in his life, even before the bond took place.

These days, Draco is not exactly looking to get laid—too little time, too much to do. Then again, it’s been a long time since ‘getting laid’ held any kind of promise for him. He’s already bonded to someone who quite mattered to him. None of them, sadly, will ever be able to replace the exact amount of love Draco had for Harry. Even the stars are too close to reach it.

It’s just a shame his partner was also someone who walked out on him twice, and then stood outside for half a year all while the papers published tons of fake articles, most of them over Draco’s interference in his life, all of them leaving Draco not in a very good place. Someone who had him Obliviated and then had himself Obliviated, too, for good measure, and also someone who came back for his son almost two months after he was born.

Draco is still regretting he lacked the courage to shut the door on his face.

All in all, most of that has created an odd mix of hate swirling into his love, that he’s certainly sure none of the men proposing to him deserves.

Straightening his shoulders, Draco snaps out of his thoughts. His break has been over for two minutes. He goes back to the kitchen, rather sure Naomi in there has a few orders ready for him to serve.

* * *

 

The sky is dark on Thursday when he leaves work. There’s a chilly wind outside, blowing into his face in a quite unpleasant way, but at least it’s not strong enough to sneak under his jacket. The air feels a bit soggy, he thinks, as his hands pull the jacket closer to his chest. He reckons it might rain soon—not that _that_ ’s a surprise, this is still England after all. Besides, they did mention it on the weather forecast this morning.

He was up pretty early, Scorpius woke him up crying at four. It’s rather nice he gets to go home soon this week, though he still has to stop by Potter’s place. On the way to Morden South station, he smiles at the old man who sells papers near the coffee shop. Then, he waves at Salma, his replacement from six forwards. “Naomi is going to bite your head off,” he shouts at her, over the wind, over the children playing at the park. “She’s been complaining for a while that you weren’t there yet.”

“Oof… I’m having an awful day,” she replies. “My washing machine started spitting water at me this morning. Just like that, out of nothing!”

“Really?” Washing machine, huh? He’ll have to search Google for that when he gets home, his best guess is that it’s a machine that washes something—what though, he has no clue. “It must have been terrible.” He’s trying here, mostly because her face looks like it was.

“God, yes.” Apparently it was the right response, another point for him in the Get to Know Your Muggle Workmates game. “I called to have it repaired, but the blokes came almost an hour late… flipping disgrace, I tell you. I keep hoping today is over. Tomorrow can’t be this bad, can it?” Then, she asks, “And you? Going home already?”

“No, not yet. I have to pick up Scorpius first,” he says, with a smile. A smile he’s not feeling at all: dropping by Potter’s tends to make him more furious than pleased.

“Ugh. With his mom, again?”

Draco nods, and they both grimace at each other, though in truth behind Draco’s grimace hides the thought of how massively wrong they all are.

“Go then, he must be hoping you get there. Save him from that lass.” She smiles a smile tanged with sweetness, all while Draco tries his hardest to mutter the chuckle that comes with that image: Harry Potter, come buy now a new lady version of everyone’s favourite hero! “He’s a tiny little cherub, your son…”

Draco mostly thinks he’s a tiny, tiny replica of himself. He didn’t even get Potter’s eyes, or his hair—on one side he’s grateful, as he’s not too sure he’d particularly enjoy the daily reminder of one of his biggest mistakes. Still, he agrees with her.

“I better give it a run too, I quite like my head where it is.”

“Indeed,” he says. They both say their goodbyes, and she leaves. A while after she’s disappeared into the distance, Draco walks past the station and into the loos, where he Apparates to Potter’s doorstep.

“Evening,” he greets. Admittedly, he’s only acknowledging Potter’s presence out of respect for Mother. “Not greeting people is rude,” she kept telling him, even though Potter here, the Hero of Heroes—or, if you ask Draco, the supreme wanker out of all heartbreakers—barely deserves that much.

“Hi,” Potter says, running a damp hand through his disorderly hair. Even his trousers are wet, he must have wiped them off against the fabric before opening the door. “How are you?”

Potter, too, looks rather uncomfortable, though not really as much as Draco is currently feeling.

“You look like shit,” Draco says, even though Potter doesn’t. Even being such a mess as he is these days, Draco would still gladly lick his feet and ask for more. He’d facepalm here—over his shame, over his rather stupid feelings that refuse to go away—if it weren’t too obvious a move. He knows he’s only said that because he wants to see pain in Potter’s eyes. He wants Potter to hurt, like Draco did, for _months_. “Where’s the little one?”

“Upstairs, he just fell asleep.” Draco maneuvers around Harry, always standing in his way, the twat. “Could you perhaps not—”

“Ignore you?” Draco kindly finishes for him, way before Potter even gets that far. “No, thanks, I quite enjoy pretending you’re not here,” he sneers. “I wouldn’t want to make you feel like you deserve my attention. You don’t.”

“Dear God… do you have to be so harsh on me, every single time?” Potter pauses, one of his hands rubbing over his face, one of his tics when he’s nervous. It makes Draco’s chest hurt oddly. For a moment there, he rather wishes he didn’t know that much, that he’d been looking elsewhere for the few months they actually dated. Even the mere question asked makes his mind scream _yes yes yes!_ Because Draco _has_ to, or else he’ll forget what Potter did to him.

Sometimes, Draco thinks he knows Harry better than he knows himself.

“Look,” Potter tentatively starts, “why don’t we have a drink and let him sleep for a while?”

“I no longer drink.” Draco lifts one eyebrow, mockingly. “What with the pregnancy and all, remember?”

“Oh, come on… please?” For a moment there, Draco hates his heart. It really should stop thumping like that, making him feel guilty over the tiny spark of hope in Potter’s eyes. He’s not the one doing something _wrong_ here, Potter is. “You’re no longer pregnant. I have one of those bottles you used to like.” The issue here is Potter is asking for things neither of them wants. Things Draco doesn’t even _want_ to want, but he can’t help it. He does kind of want that. He just doesn’t want it for a day or two—he’d want it forever, but Potter here is the farthest thing from trustworthy he can think of. And honestly, he can think of plenty of untrustworthy things. Like his luck. “Or we could have tea, no alcohol there. How about tea? Shall I make some?”

Ignoring Potter and his weirdly expectant rambling, Draco starts walking towards the stairs.

“Draco, he can sleep here. It’s not like I’m going to kill him. He’s my son, for Christ’s sake!”

“No, he can’t,” Draco grumbles. “He’s coming with me.”

“So, what, I only get to see him during the day?”

“No, you only get to see him while I’m working and you’re not, and no one else can stay with him. That is the deal, as per the agreement with your signature on it.”

“You _forced_ me to sign that. If you recall, I didn’t really _want_ to.”

 _At least my ‘forcing’ wasn’t quite as hardcore as yours, when you had your friend Granger remove my memories, before all three of you left on a dandy stroll throughout the world. At least my ‘forcing’ wasn’t quite as hardcore as yours when I had to spend three years of my life without even knowing_ who _I was bonded to, or even_ if _I was_. It sits on Draco’s tongue for quite a bit, rumbling around desperately, almost ready to jump out any second now. But in the end Draco turns around, preparing to climb up the stairs. Only, Potter’s hand is clamped around his wrist, all of a sudden, and it shouldn’t be there. It shouldn’t even be touching him. Not after the look Potter gave him, back at the gala. Disgusting was written all over it. He cannot take that back now.

“It’s not fair.”

Draco can’t stop himself on time, blowing air loudly through his mouth.

“It’s not _fair_.”

“Potter, get your hand off me.”

“We’re both his dads!” Potter complains, yet again.

 _Good_ , Draco thinks, let him complain all he wants. He catches himself hoping, a bit maliciously, Potter chokes on his complaints the same way Draco choked on apologies and sorries for months on end, no one else beside him but Pansy. See, at least Potter is lucky in that too: he has more than one friend standing by him.

“He was never inside you,” Draco says, coldly. “You are _nothing_ to him.”

“I am his father!”

Draco’s eyes fly down to his wrist. Potter’s hand is still around it. It feels damp, pressing into Draco’s skin. His whole body suddenly feels cold, colder than ice mid-winter, colder than he’s ever felt before and he can swear every living cell in him _really_ _hates_ _Potter_ right then.

And loves him.

Hating him and loving him at the same time. Draco is frantic, he’s enraged, he’s agitated. He’s _desperate_. He’s all those things at the same time, and for a moment there, he sort of feels like giggling inside because how on Earth is any of that fine? He’s not fine. They, together, are not even remotely _fine_.

“Potter…” Sadly the worst part of all this is that he’s rather sure Harry knows that, too. He’s just not listening hard enough. “… let go of me.”

“No! He’s my son, too. At least admit that much.”

“You are _not_ his father.” Draco’s hands clench into fists. “His father is that bloke who kicked me out of his home when he found out about…” His own lips press tightly closed—he can’t say it, he won’t say it. He doesn’t want to feel like that again, like he’s useless. He’s doing something with his life now: he’s working a decent job, he’s taking care of Scorpius. He is _not_ useless; the Dark Lord was _wrong_. None of this is Draco’s fault. _Harry_ is the one to blame here. “… and then you spent almost half a year ignoring all my calls, all my apologies, all my fucking _despair._ You gladly chose to fake a life where none of that existed _._ You, in fact, weren’t even there when he was born.” He can’t help it: the words want out. “No, you decided to take yet another, what, month and a half? Before you even decided to _finally_ show up.”

He shakes the arm trapped by Potter’s hand until it’s free of his grasp, free of the pressure, free of the chains holding him down. Free of everything.

“Does any of that,” Draco spits, furiously, “sound especially paternal to you?”

He really, really wants to punch Potter on the face, punch the stupid prat who’s not even aware of the damage he’s done.

Potter mumbles, “No…”

“Good. Because to me, it doesn’t either. But that,” he emphasises, “that is what he’s going to hear, being my son.”

“You wouldn’t—”

“Oh, Potter…” Draco’s lips turn into a sneer. Inside him, there’s a distraught chuckle ringing constantly against the edges of his being. “You are so, so naïve. It’s not like he needs _me_ to tell him that. Secrets are hard to keep in the world you live. I reckon you must have noticed, given you dated the—” between handmade quotations, he repeats Skeeter’s words on the _Prophet_ ’s gossip column, “—Whore of Whores. For quite a while, too.”

“I’ve already apologised for that.”

“I’m perfectly aware you have. That doesn’t mean I have forgiven you.”

“But why not? What else do I have to do?”

“You don’t get it, do you?” He pushes at Potter’s chest, hard enough that Potter stumbles backwards a few steps. “You don’t trust me now. You have never trusted me. You didn’t even trust me back on sixth year, when you had me fucking Obliviated.”

“For Christ’s sake Draco, she’s removed the spell!”

“Oh, yes. She definitely has.” But lets not forget here that that spell was cast on Potter’s orders.

“You’re _fine_ now.”

“Sure. Fine and dandy. Can’t you see?”

“You remember everything.”

“Absolutely.” Indeed, he’s rather certain now he’s bonded to Potter. Not that he had any doubt before, given the pregnancy. “You know what I remember now, too? That no one ever asked _my_ opinion on having my memory set to zero on anything that concerned our relationship. I can assure you, ‘Yes, please, go ahead’ wouldn’t have been my first answer.”

“It was dangerous, Draco. There was a war going on.” And now the war is over and it’s all good. He can tell that’s what Potter thinks. But there are different ways of good: there is crazy good and nice good, there’s even weirdly good. And then there’s this here, between them, which is not even _good_ at all. It’s just insane. “What else could I have done? It’s not that I didn’t trust you, I couldn’t even trust _myself_ not to go babbling about you if I got caught by them…”

Silence stretches long in time, scratching onto forever before Draco decides to break it. “Give me my child, Potter.”

“Why can’t we go back to how we were?” Potter begs. “I still love you,” his voice says, behind him, as he goes upstairs.

 _I do, too._ And it hurts. And it’s funny Harry says that now, when they’re over, especially when he never had the guts to say it before. The closer he got was ‘I _may_ ’, which is clearly not ‘I love’.

“Because,” Draco explains when he’s about to leave, Scorpius tucked against his chest, “we are not the same people that we were back then.” _I don’t want to love you anymore_. _You’ve done your bit. Let me fly free._

Potter mumbles, “Will you at least bring him back tomorrow?”

He doesn’t have to. Pansy’s free tomorrow. He could leave Scorpius with her. She keeps complaining he’s a pest, but Draco knows (his tiny little monster is the most precious human-shaped living being on Earth) it’s said lovingly (and she is indeed the one largely massive pest standing in that whole house).

But there’s a glimpse of pain in Potter’s eyes. The shattered pieces of Draco’s heart ache burning with longing over the fling they had. They won’t let him do anything else but muttering, “Yes. All right.” After an unending sigh, he adds, “Yes, I’ll bring him back tomorrow.”

As he leaves, he’s not thinking it bloody hurts that Potter is willing to settle for Scorpius over him. He doesn’t feel battered and bruised from being Potter’s second best. Not at all.

(Only perhaps he does, a tiny bit.)

* * *

 

Draco can’t stop thinking about Granger’s visit on the way home. All through the night, it repeats endlessly in his head. He’s wearily conscious of every single second in it. It happens once and again, over and over despite his constant attempts to sleep. She removed her curse. She apologised miserably. “He asked me to erase your feelings for him.” A well-cast _Obliviate_ that left him remembering nothing at all, not even the chat he had with Pansy a little while before that happened. Not to mention the constant headache he kept getting, whenever he tried to think about anything even vaguely related to it. “To make you forget. I thought… I don’t know what I thought back then, he said it was the best choice and I believed him. But when I saw him with you, the way he looked at you… He’s never looked at Ginny like that.”

“You knew all along,” he said. It wasn’t an accusation, though it should have been. It wasn’t a preconception, though it could have been, had he not gotten to know her quite a bit in the past few months. It was merely a supposition based on facts, facts presented.

Begrudgingly, she admitted, “Yes. Not in full detail, but I knew you were somehow together back then. It didn’t even seem weird to me when Harry asked me to _Obliviate_ him afterwards. There was a war going on…”

“Why didn’t you give him back his memories after the Dark Lord…” See, that part there, he didn’t get. He’s still not too sure he gets it. “Why didn’t you break the spell on me?”

“I should have. I promised him I would, if we won the war. I kept thinking about it, and I was planning to, but then…” She looked down at her hands, her face a dance of grievance. “I _couldn’t_ ,” she whispered. “Ron got so happy when he started dating his sister again, you should have seen him. He kept saying Harry was part of the family and… then they married, and I… I thought that was best for him! I honestly thought not remembering you was best for him.”

“It _wasn’t_ ,” Draco snapped, furious. “It’s still not.”

“I know,” she mumbled. Draco remembers thinking there about the look she gave him, back at the gala. It wasn’t pity what he saw on that glance. It was shame: self-shame, shame over her own acts. “Believe me, now I know. But now it’s too late to change it.” Understanding that much didn’t keep Draco from kicking her out.

Before she left, however, she gave him the password to Harry’s home. Draco did consider dropping by, going to see him. He did want to. He missed him so much…

Eventually, he decided not to. The baby came first. And anyway, Potter was the one who needed to apologise here. Draco had already apologised too much, definitely too often. Obliviating them both wasn’t exactly Draco’s idea, which means Potter here, isn’t exactly quite as guiltless as he has everyone believe he is. Rather the opposite. He might even be the reason Draco ended up as an escort.

And Potter wants forgiveness now? Well, Draco isn’t feeling extremely forgiving these days. Potter can wait. (Wait forever with his pants on fire, for all he is is a liar and a cheat. A despicable cheat. Cheating on him with Weasel’s sis and then cheating on her with him.) Draco has to admit he won’t be too sorry if he waits until the end of times. It’s what he deserves.

* * *

 

“I can’t live without you,” Potter tells him two days later. “Please, please, come back,” he begs, a week later. “What do I have to do to have you come back here,” he asks, two weeks gone by. “What do I have to do? I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” Draco asks, because this is too good to let go. He has a rather long list of things he’d like to ask for: love, cash, admiration, self-esteem… the luck Potter vilely stole from him, now eleven years ago. He’d like to have all that back. Sadly, Potter’s magic owns not fate, and fate is nothing but irredeemable chaos. Draco knows that much, his own life is more than proof of it.

“Anything at all. Whatever you want, it’s yours. But please, come back.”

Hilarious, Draco thinks, that he’s offering this now. As if he _could_ be bought, when he got kicked out for having been bought. “Those days are past, Potter. I’m not your whore.” In fact he’s not anyone’s whore, not anymore.

“No, but you’re bonded to me.” Ain’t that cheating a bit there, Potter? Him and his dubious ethics, that only exist for others and never for him. Draco wonders sometimes, does Potter ever pause and contemplate Draco had no other option at the time but doing what he did? Selling his body, for cash he lacked. Especially after being denied his passport. “I need you. Please, come back.”

In the end, Draco asks for nothing. Doesn’t even contemplate it. He has to admit that inside him, his mind is still chuckling at the mess his life is. It would be so easy to give in, yet he’s too scared to lose Potter once again, given how last time nearly destroyed him. Given that he’s still alive now mostly thanks to Scorpius, the tiny human growing in his belly all those months ago. On the outside, he just picks up Scorpius and leaves.

And it all goes fine. 

Except he can’t help wanking like mad that night, after putting Scorpius to bed. He wanks miserably, hopelessly, desperately, all while trying to convince himself that the dark haired lad in his mind is _not_ Potter. He’s just some random bloke. For some absurd reason, he seems to be trying very, very hard to look just like Potter, up there, not that Draco knows why or anything. But still, he’s definitely, absolutely, categorically not Potter.

Except his eyes are green _Morsmordre_ , the same green that shoots Draco’s heart dead. Except there’s a scar on his forehead, and it just happens to be lightning-shaped.

* * *

 

“All can be forgiven,” Pansy says.

“Not him.” _He broke me_. “He can’t be forgiven.” _You don’t even know what he’s done_.

“Suit yourself.” She taps the ash off her cigarette into the small ashtray standing between them. Shoots him a grim grin while explaining, “It’s just, it’s never going to get better, you know? You’re still bonded to him…”

“I know.”

“You’re always going to feel like a part of you is—”

“I know, Pans. I _know_ how it feels, all right?” He grabs the fag off Pansy’s hand. “Merlin,” he coughs out, smoke riveting out of his mouth after the small drag he took. “Tastes disgusting. Don’t even know how you can smoke this crap.”

“Understandable, since you don’t smoke.”

“Well, now I have, and it tastes awful.” He leans back against the wall on Pansy’s garden, glad to observe the sky from a distance. Then, he shuts his eyes. “Not everything can be forgiven, Pans.” It’s not that easy. Some things just can’t. What Potter did to him… Draco finds himself shaking his head, yet again. “I fell for him _twice_ , Pans. None of them worked fine.”

“You know what they say, third time’s lucky…”

It’s nothing but a suggestion. But somehow a suggestion that’s now stuck in his mind, and no matter how hard he shakes his head it’s not leaving. “I am not falling for your words of advice again. Honestly, keep your tip-offs to yourself.”

Pansy snorts. “As if you’re over him.”

As if, she says. As if. “You vex me.”

The sad thing is, she’s not too wrong in her assumption. Draco will never be over him. He knows that much, just as she does. 

* * *

 

“It’s all fine,” Draco tells himself next week, when Monday rolls around.

(It’s not like his prick feels raw from all the wanking he’s been doing. It’s not like his forearm hurts so much he’s now wanking with his left hand.)

 _It’s all perfect_ , his mind insists on Tuesday.

(It’s definitely not Potter he spends all day thinking about. There are other people up there, definitely. It’s not like Potter is his wank fantasy, though he has to admit he’s actually a great fantasy. He’s definitely thinking of other people, too. It’s just a shame they all happen to look quite a bit like Potter. Or, _sod it_. A lot.)

“Freaking _fabulous_ ,” he hisses when a glass breaks, fractured pieces falling from his fingers. Dark red drops spot the table below him. It almost looks like Potter’s scar. Half a week has gone by now, and things here, are not getting better.

(It’s not Potter, damn him. He’s not masturbating to Potter. It’s rather weird how that idea just won’t stick to his mind. He thinks for a moment there that he might have been right before, while going Zen on Pans: must buy a new brain soon, the one he owns now seems to be failing miserably. Especially at this whole ‘coping with reality’ part of it.)

He washes his face on Friday night, wanting nothing more than to vanish after this dreadful week he’s had. He just happens to look at his eyes in the rickety mirror hanging over the sink. There are dark smudges under them. His mirror self moves its mouth at him in a stutter. _It’s all good_ , it seems to be saying.

(Merlin, it’s not. It’s really not, but he’d rather _Avada Kedavra_ himself than go crawling back to Potter. Even though he really, really wants to. It’s not like he can do that though: there’s still a child to take care of, a child who won’t even let him rest his eyes for a mere second.

Potter though… Potter could help with that, couldn’t he?

 _No! No, he can’t_ , his mind yells at him, and it’s right. The child is his and not Potter’s, Potter wasn’t even there when he gave birth. But by now Draco is contemplating banging his head against the wall, repeatedly, unendingly, and rather seriously too.)

* * *

 

Potter tries to kiss him one month later. It doesn’t exactly work too well. Except, perhaps it works _far_ _too_ _well_.

Draco is so wound up—from sleepless nights, from _masturbating_ , bloody hell, to Potter of all people. From his child waking him up every two hours, from a long eve spent trying to feed Scorpius who wouldn’t eat, and an endless morning spent at work, serving others plates he can’t even afford on the misery salary he’s paid for his part-time job. Sometimes he catches himself thinking they could have been spent at Potter’s, all those days. He misses sleeping with him. He misses his arms, wrapped around his waist as they both gave in and called it a night. He’s just so wound up by all that, he actually falls for it at first. Potter’s lips are soft and tender against his. Just as wonderful, perhaps even better than he remembers them. His mouth parts a tiny bit. Only, then he recalls this is not supposed to happen. This here is what he’s been avoiding. It needs to stop _now_ , before it hurts, before it breaks his façade of nonchalance, his true feelings pouring forwards.

He pushes Potter back quite hard. Before it breaks _him_ , yet again.

“What the fuck—” and both the eff and the kay of his ‘fuck’ seem to come out rather strong sounding, “—was _that_?”

Potter raises an eyebrow. Rather mockingly, he does mention, “You seemed to like it quite a bit.”

“You don’t get to do that.” It’s a plea. A plea that comes out as a threat. “You don’t get to mess with my mind anymore.” Draco swallows. Not again.

“I’m not trying to mess with your mind,” Potter tries to explain, even as Draco is backing up, trying to keep Potter’s hands off him. “I wouldn’t… look, if I could go back I’d change everything, I’d change it all. I’d do it all over again and better, but I can’t.” Of course he can’t. “All we have is now. I mean it, Draco, I really mean it, I still love you.” Draco really doesn’t want to believe that, believe any of Potter’s words. But Potter does look rather desperate, as if he’s the last string of sanity Potter’s trying to grasp, to cling to. “I love you as much as I did before.”

Draco looks into his eyes, drowns in the green waters of swamps. _Even more_ , they seem to whisper, _even more than I did before_. Draco turns around and leaves, cradling Scorpius against his chest. Potter is lying, he knows that much. That, and he doesn’t want the hurt back.

Yet the thought remains in Draco’s mind, coming back when he least expects it.

“You don’t love me,” he tells Potter the next day. “You just want a family,” and he’s perfectly aware he’s repeating Weaselette’s words here. He’s still not sure they weren’t true. “Well, news flash for you: Scorpius is my child. He’s _my_ family, not yours.”

“Look, I’m not asking for him. God knows I already have, and what you said… well, it’s not like I can argue with that, can I?”

“What are you asking then?”

“I’m asking for _you_ ,” Potter tells him. “I do miss you.”

Draco can’t help laughing, rather incredulous. “You’re on a power-trip here, Potter, because you _know_ ”—Draco also knows nothing ever is going to feel as good as these moments, that no kiss will be as sweet as Harry’s, that no other arms can keep the chilly cold from his soul tucked away as warmly as Harry’s do—“I’m bonded to you.”

“Would you at least consider it?” Potter asks.

“Consider what?”

“Moving here, with me?”

Draco can’t answer that. Inside, he’s panicking slightly. He is already considering it, and that’s not exactly good news. It’s leaving another hole open—a hole his soul could accidentally slip through, a hole far too close to his heart.

“Would you at least consider it?” he asks, again. “We don’t even have to date…”

Draco doesn’t answer. He just leaves.

* * *

 

It changes nothing, though somehow it changes everything. When he leaves Scorpius there the next time he does, Potter doesn’t even try to touch him. He doesn’t even try to kiss him. He’s being too nice, too polite, too civil. Draco is missing a bit of the other Potter he’s seen, the one who did things before talking, the one who tried to kiss him out of the blue. He’s kind of wishing it would happen again. Alas, his luck is still missing.

Sometimes he wonders if it’s the world, asking him perhaps to choose, to act, to do something here, anything. His mind is all over the place. It’s all a mess. And he’s still not sure of what he’s chosen when he rages into Potter’s house and fucks him over the couch, but dear Merlin, it feels like _freedom_ again.

“Does this mean,” Potter asks, afterwards, “that I get a second chance, then?”

Draco is doing up the buttons on his shirt. He’s kind of marveling he fucked Potter over the couch. Now, _that_ there is doing something. Quite a shame he’s still not sure if this something is good or not. “A third chance, actually,” he answers. “You’ve had two already, and you blew them both.”

“Whatever.” Potter rolls his eyes. Then, he stretches on the couch, all naked.

For a moment there, Draco contemplates losing all his clothes again, is not like his prick can stay down too long when this is the view he’s getting: Potter, still naked, still shimmering with sweat, all skin and those bloody green eyes and… those perfect lips. Merlin, they did feel great around his cock. Why not try that again, indeed, why not?

“Do I?”

“No,” Draco says. “You’re a shag, and that’s that.”

“Fine, whatever. Can I be your shag again?” Except Potter’s pity face is somehow tugging at the strings of his heart. “I’ll be a good boy. Fingers crossed.”

Fuck fuck fuck, _don’t_. “I don’t know. Maybe.” And he knows, he just knows, that his ‘maybe’ here sadly means ‘yes’. “You’re always a good boy anyway,” he says, with a shake of his head before settling back into the couch, next to Harry. He pushes Potter’s fingers off when they start climbing over his thigh, and adds, “At least according to the press.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Potter grins up at him, the twat. “There’s truth to some clichés.”

Draco rolls his eyes, but stays there while Potter goes to pick up glasses. He stays there definitely not staring at Potter’s arse as he walks away. Potter brings back one of the bottles he bought for him, ages and ages ago, back when Draco still lived here. Draco’s heart aches with longing, aches with wanting, aches with… all of this. Aches with Potter down on his knees between his legs. Aches with the taste of his come on Potter’s tongue right afterwards.

He goes upstairs then, to pick up Scorpius. On his way out, he kisses Potter’s cheek. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says. His cheeks aren’t red. He’s not feeling embarrassed here, not at all.

Potter shakes his head. “One day, I’m telling you. One day you’ll stay.”

 _Go, if you want to_ , he seems to be saying. _But you’ll be back_.

Draco knows he will, eventually.

He pauses by the door to his bedroom, after reading Scorpius to sleep. Touches his lips, thinking of Potter’s. The way his gaze touched his own body, and how it looked different than it did before, it looked better, almost as when he fell for him the first time… It’s just a thought, nothing more. But it does cross his mind for a moment.

The luck he lost all those years ago seems to, somehow, _finally_ be back.

 

 

 

* * *

**Epilogue: Time Marks a Smooth, Arching Trajectory**

* * *

 

 “I have to say, I’m quite impressed,” Draco says, once he’s done reading yet another Potter-based article on the _Daily Prophet_. Potter, who’s heating up some baby milk for Scorpius, glances at him for a second. “Impressed by what?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m just finding it hard to believe you managed to beat a vampire without even your wand. Are you sure you didn’t have a couple of trolls helping you?”

“No trolls, I swear. Basically cause none of that even happened.”

Draco’s eyebrows rise. “Figures…”

“You know what’s even harder to believe? That I’m still head over heels for the prat who keeps reading _that_ rag during breakfast.”

Draco watches him. Watches him fill Scorpius’ feeding bottle, watches him shake it, touch one side, grimace slightly. Quite tentatively, he asks, “You know what I really, really wanted, back when I was a child?”

“Power, likely,” Potter snorts, “what with you being you…”

Draco huffs. “Merlin, Potter, I’m trying to be _serious_ here!”

“Yeah, okay, sorry. Go on.”

“I wanted, you know, friends. People who admired me for what I’d done, not because their parents’ told them to. I just wanted… I don’t know, a normal life, kind of.” He doesn’t say, _That’s pretty much why I cling to the Prophet, because it’s boring and normal and fine_. He doesn’t say, _It only got worse when the war started, worser than worse, look where it landed me_. He definitely doesn’t say, _I was never a whore because I liked it. I mostly wanted_ you _, despite your friend’s spell_ , though he has to admit all of that does cross his mind once or twice. “I was just thinking that this here is pretty close to that.”

Harry stays put for a while, glancing up at the bottle. Likely seeing nothing, Draco thinks. He’s just opened his heart here, he hopes Harry can see that much. He hopes he’s seeing the _I love you, too_ , left unsaid. This is hard for Draco, but he’s really bloody hoping so.

Harry puts the bottle down. Comes closer, sitting on the edge of the table in front of Draco. “I love you,” he says. One of his hands curls around Draco’s chin, lifting his head up, so there’s eyes on eyes. Draco looks at him for a moment there. Then his gaze shifts away, biting his lip.

 _I think I have always loved you_.

“You know that,” Harry says, “don’t you?”

“Yeah…” Draco tries on a hesitant smile. “I know.” He thinks he does now, he’s never been sure before today. Harry doesn’t talk much, he just does—and fucks up more often than not when the things he does have to do with Draco.

His smile is met with a kiss, Harry’s lips are salty when he tastes them. There’s yet another kiss, and another one and then Harry says, his hands resting on Draco’s shoulders, “Well then, I’m hoping here you also know your life can’t get much more normal than _this_.”

“Indeed, as normal as it gets,” Draco answers. Useless left behind, no more failures in his life ever. Sometimes, he can feel the sun guiding their steps—forwards never backwards, forwards is the way to go. It’s just a shame his sun looks exactly like Potter: green as spring fields, pleased like a Quidditch winner and always, always brighter than light itself. But he can totally live with that. More than, even. Life is but a blessing, he’s been thinking lately. 

He’s hoping this one in particular lasts forever.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Story placed between 1999-2001, referencing:  
> * **[_Lineage_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineage_\(video_game\))** , a medieval fantasy, massively multiplayer online role-playing game which was rather huge back then.  
> * **ed2k/eMule** , a peer-to-peer file sharing application.  
> * **[Mr Trololo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oavMtUWDBTM)** , because Draco is [an absolute troll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll) and I’m not.  
> * **[Ab Fab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolutely_Fabulous)** , a former British television sitcom.  
> * **[Madonna](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s__rX_WL100)** and the [Wham Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgZ7gMze7A). I blame queerness, the eighties, and def the nineties.
> 
> Thank you for reading; kudos are welcome!


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